“We were nearly boundless zeros, just pitiful little beings swept from one kind of oblivion to another.”

“But here, Ms. Pelletier, is the thing. Without infinitesimals, the calculus as we know and love it simply wouldn't exist. It is these nearly-zero, sort-of-zero, sometimes-zero quantities that allow us to understand the world. Something which seems to be nearly nothing turns out to be crucial to everything. So though I, or for you that matter, or any of us, may be, as a collection of atoms, practically indistinguishable from zero, this does not necessarily mean we are insignificant. Indeed, it may be that we are actually crucially important.”

“They all settled into being the kind of friends when they heard from each other.... or when they occasionally got together. And when they were not in touch, they did not think of one another.”

“This was a passage in which everyone moved and was unfathomable, which was how Thomasina saw people. She was not a person who froze someone's character in her mind, calling this one egotistical and that one not nearly confident enough and another one truthful or untruthful. To Thomasina people were rivers, always ready to move from one state of being into another. It was not fair, she felt, to treat people as if they were finished beings. Everyone was always becoming and unbecoming.”

“If the town were a black hole, I was the helpless star being sucked into oblivion. It was an oblivion I craved.”

“..we were always taught, instead of waiting to be swept off our feet, to 'expect little, forgive much'.”