“Just understand that the end began long agoWe got here just in timeLookAll the squares in the sidewalks were already thereAll these strangers have more money than you doAll the good riffs have been takenAnd everyone is so scaredMurder is commonplaceI don't even flinch at the gunshots outside my windowI feel lonely without them”

“I've been lonely for so long. And I've been hurt so deeply. If only I could have met you again a long time ago, then I wouldn't have had to take all these detours to get here.'Tengo shook his head. 'I don't think so. This way is just fine. This is exactly the right time. For both of us. [...] We needed that much time.... to understand how lonely we really were.”

“None of them seem as crazy obsessive about everything as I am. It's strange 'cause I had the same feeling in high school that I have here. It's like, well, it just seems so easy for everyone else and so difficult for me. I turn from these extremes of feeling on top of the fucking world - to feeling so despondent. They don't have to struggle like I do - or maybe that's just me comparing my goddamn insides to everyone else's outsides. But I swear to God, I just seem to wrestle with everything more than anyone else.”

“It is everyone's bounden duty to try to get more than they have got already. If you have got two shillin' you try to make it into four shillin' . . . there is no end to it.”

“In Moscow you sit in a huge room at a restaurant; you know no one and no one knows you, and at the same time you don't feel a stranger. But here you know everyone and everyone knows you, and yet you are a stranger -- a stranger... A stranger, and lonely...”

“It is morally as bad not to care whether a thing is true or not, so long as it makes you feel good, as it is not to care how you got your money as long as you have got it.”