“There's nothing stronger than the heart of a volunteer.”

“The first lesson is that you can't lose a war if you have command of the air, and you can't win a war if you haven't.”

“You can't live on nothing." "I can live on sunlight falling across little bridges. I can live on the Botticelli-blue cornflower pattern on the out-billowing garments of the attendant to Aphrodite and the pattern of strawberry blossoms and the little daisies in the robe of Primavera. I can live on the doves flying (he says) in cohorts from the underside of the faded gilt of the balcony of Saint Mark's cathedral and the long corridors of the Pitti Palace. I can gorge myself on Rome and the naked Bacchus and the face like a blasted lightning-blasted white birch that is some sort of Fury.”

“Sara wasn't spooked by death, never had been. Dead bodies were reassuring once you got used to them. The body of her mother for instance--so unlike her mother in every way that all she felt about it was curiosity. Flesh became rubber. It wasn't just lifeless--a word that suggests limp or inanimate. It was beyond lifeless. To understand the power of the soul you have to see its absence. Bodies didn't bother her any more than a plant would.”

“There's a black rose growing in your garden.”

“Under the heavens and under the sea there's a friend I don't know, who holds the right key.”

“...if you do not even understand what words say, how can you expect to pass judgement on what words conceal?”