“Between the time the last train leaves and the first train arrives, the place changes: it's not the same as in daytime.”

“The ocean was one of the greatest things he had ever seen in his life—bigger and deeper than anything he had imagined. It changed its color and shape and expression according to time and place and weather. It aroused a deep sadness in his heart, and at the same time it brought his heart peace and comfort.”

“We were both at a delicate age, when the mere fact that we went to different schools and lived two train stops apart was all it took for me to feel our worlds had changed completely”

“To arrive at sex, you first have to undo the zip of the girl's dress. And between zip and sex lay a process in which twenty- maybe thirty- subtle decisions and judgements had to be made”

“Once, when I was younger, I thought I could be someone else. I'd move to Casablanca, open a bar, and I'd meet Ingrid Bergman. Or more realistically - whether actually more realistic or not - I'd tune in on a better life, something more suited to my true self. Toward that end, I had to undergo training. I read The Greening of America, and I saw Easy Rider three times. But like a boat with a twisted rudder, I kept coming back to the same place. I wasn't anywhere. I was myself, waiting on the shore for me to return.”

“Open your eyes, train your ears, use your head. If a mind you have, then use it while you can.”

“The young man knows that he is irretrievably lost. This is no town of cats, he finally realizes. It is the place where he is meant to be lost. It is another world, which has been prepared especially for him. And never again, for all eternity, will the train stop at this station to take him back to the world he came from.”