“The primitive thinking of the supernaturally inclined amounts to what his psychiatric colleagues call a problem, or an idea, of reference. An excess of the subjective, the ordering of the world in line with your needs, an inability to contemplate your own unimportance. In Henry’s view such reasoning belongs on a spectrum at whose far end, rearing like an abandoned temple, lies psychosis.”

“She wanted to leave, she wanted to lie alone face down on her bed and savor the vile piquancy of the moment, and go back down the lines of branching consequences to the point before the destruction began. She needed to contemplate with eyes closed the full richness of what she had lost, what she had given away, and to anticipate the new regime.”

“He knew these last lines by heart and mouthed them now in the darkness. My reason for life. Not living, but life. That was the touch. And she was his reason for life, and why he must survive.”

“And though you think the world is at your feet, it can rise up and tread on you.”

“By degrees, he joins that sorry legion of passive men who abandon their children in order to placate their second wives.”

“The luxury of being half-asleep, exploring the fringes of psychosis in safety.”

“Or he was simply pretending—like many drinkers, he liked to think each new day drew a line under the day before.”