“When things got tough, Sabina, like any normal, red-blooded American woman, turned up the volume.”

“It was while he was on the tower thatRobbie came to the rampart beneath. 'I want you to look at this,' Robbie called up to him, and flourished a newly painted shield. 'You like it?'Thomas peered down and, in the moonlight, saw something red. 'What is it?' he asked. 'A blood smear?''You blind English bastard,' Robbie said, 'it's the red heart of Douglas!''Ah. From up here it looks likesomething died on the shield.”

“Americans are rather like bad Bulgarian wine; the don't travel well.”

“That is the injustice of a woman's lot. A woman has to bring up her children; and that means to restrain them, to deny them things they want, to set them tasks, to punish them when they do wrong, to do all the unpleasant things. And then the father, who has nothing to do but pet them and spoil them, comes in when all her work is done and stealstheir affection from her.”

“Danny had no idea what the thing was. All he knew was that he lived more or less in a constant state of expecting something any day, any hour, that would change everything, knock the world upside down and put Danny's whole life into perspective as a story of complete success, because every twist and turn and snag and fuckup would always have been leading up to this. Unexpected stuff could hit him like the thing at first: a girl he'd forgotten giving his number to suddenly calling up out of the blue, a friend with some genius plan for making money, better yet a person he'd never heard of who wanted to talk. Danny got an actual physical head rush from messages like these, but as soon as he called back and found out the details, the calls would turn out to just be about more projects, possibilities, schemes that boiled down to everything staying exactly like it was.”

“Normal is the delusion of the majority.”

“Charity you can give even when you haven't got.”