“I like this world. I like drinking champagne. I like not smoking. I like Dutch people speaking Dutch.”

“I ran like a cheetah - well, like a cheetah that smoked too much.”

“Dutch is not so much a language as an ailment of the throat.”

“He took a bite, swallowed. "God. If asparagus tasted like that all the time, I'd be vegetarian, too." Some people in a lacquered wooden boat approached us on the canal below. One of them, a woman with curly blond hair, maybe thirty, drank from a beer then raised her glass towards us and shouted something."We don't speak Dutch," Gus shouted back.One of the others shouted a translation: "The beautiful couple is beautiful.”

“I had always liked that: I liked routine. I liked being bored. I didn’t want to, but I did.”

“I liked Augustus Waters. I really, really, really liked him. I liked the way his story ended with someone else. I liked his voice. I liked that he took existentially fraught free throws. I liked that he was a tenured professor in the Department of Slightly Crooked Smiles with a dual appointment in the Department of Having a Voice That Made My Skin Feel More Like Skin. And I liked that he had two names. I've always liked people with two names, because you get to make up your mind what you call them: Gus or Augustus?”

“I was not religious, but I liked rituals. I liked the idea of connecting an action with remembering.”