“Captain John Sommers joined his brother and sister in the library, "Do you remember Jacob Todd?-The cad who defrauded us with that yarn about missions in Tierra del Fuego? asked Jeremy Sommers.-The same... He changed his name. Now he calls himself Jacob Freemont, and he's a newspaperman in San Francisco.-Egad! So it is true that in the United States any scoundrel may begin a new life?-Jacob Todd paid for his offense several times over. I think it is splendid that there is a country where a man can have a second chance.”

“Did you know that 'I told you so' has a brother,Jacob?" she asked cutting me off. "His name is 'Shut the hell up'.”

“The items on the counter in the shop had been pawned by a man who had used an American driving licence as his ID, issued in the state of New Mexico in the name Jack Bauer. He had received 16,430 kronor in total. “Is this some sort of fucking joke?” Jacob asked. “How the hell can someone get away with calling himself Jack Bauer? Jack Bauer! The TV show? Twenty-four?”

“So, really," continued Jacob as if this were perfectly normal to expound on art in these circumstances, "when you think about it, the artists who make people stop and think, who push the form, who make you uncomfortable, who are laughable, well, they're the ones who get remembered." Idly, Jacob dug a hole in the snow with his shovel and then another one next to it. "So why wouldn't you want to join the ranks of the ridiculed?”

“Her skin smelled of autumn and the wind.Don't Jacob...But it was too late. Clara didn't flinch as he pulled her close. He grabbed her hair, kissed her mouth, and he felt her heart beating as fast as his own....Let her go, Jacob. But he kissed her again, and it was his name she whispered, not Will's.”

“I understood now: how nothing looked more beautiful than that scar of his, that borderline that separated what Jacob could have been had he stayed in that orphanage from who he is.”