“To describe something as an accident is a lazy way of exempting oneself from the obligation of investigating or even preventing it in the first place.”

“Men didn't understand that you couldn't let yourself be consumed with passion when there were so many people needing your attention, when there was so much work to do. Men didn't understand that there was nothing big enough to exempt you from your obligations, which began as soon as the sun rose over the paper company and ended only after you'd finished the day's chores and fell exhausted into sleep against the background noise of I-94.”

“Reading's ability to beam you up to a different world is a good part of the reason why people like me do it in the first place---because dollar for dollar, hour per hour, it's the most expedient way to get from our proscribed little "here" to an imagined, intriguing there". Part time machine, part Concorde, part ejector seat, books are our salvation.”

“I have problems with a religion which says that faith in itself is enough for a ticket to heaven. In other words, that the ideal is your ability to manipulate your own common sense to accept something your intellect rejects. It's the same model of intellectual submission that dictatorships have used throughout time, the concept of a higher reasoning without any obligation to discharge the burden of proof.”

“Organized people are just too lazy to look for stuff.”

“And the simple fact was that it might be possible to make oneself fall in love, but only when the heart was free.Amy was having to accept that her heart was not free.”

“Big's voice trumpets, as if from stage or pulpit; his words carry weight, even pass the salt comes out of his mouth in a thou-shalt-Ten-Commandments kind of way.”