“Trouble is we end up being worse at saying things well. It's got to be an inborn fault. Naturally, everyone's got faults. My biggest fault is that the faults i was born with grow bigger each year.”

“My biggest fault is that the faults I was born with grow bigger each year.”

“I have a thing about losers. Flaws in oneself open you up to others with flaws. Not that Dostoyevsky's characters don't generate phatos, but they're flawed in ways that don't come across as faults. And while I'm on the subject, Tolstoy's characters' faults are so epic and out of scale, they're as static as backdrops.”

“Either I'm funny or the world's funny. I don't know which. The bottle and lid don't fit. It could be the bottle's fault or the lid's fault. In either case, there's no denying that the fit is bad.”

“It seems to me, though, that you always understand very well what I can't say very well. Trouble is I end up being even worse at saying things well.”

“What the world needs is a set villain that people can point at and say, “It’s all your fault!”

“How can the mind be so imperfect?" she says with a smile.I look at my hands. Bathed in the moonlight, they seem like statues, proportioned to no purpose."It may well be imperfect," I say, "but it leaves traces. And we can follow those traces, like footsteps in the snow.""Where do the lead?""To oneself," I answer. "That's where the mind is. Without the mind, nothing leads anywhere."I look up. The winter moon is brilliant, over the Town, above the Wall."Not one thing is your fault," I comfort her.”