“The whole thing was the precise opposite of what I figured it would be: slow and patient and quiet and neither particularly painful nor particularly ecstatic”

“Neither sugar nor salt tastes particularly good by itself. Each is at its best when used to season other things. Love is the same way. Use it to "season" people.”

“How can you read and talk at the same time?” I asked.“Well, I usually can’t, but neither the book nor the conversation is particularly intellectually challenging.”

“..would I have had a different lifefailing this embrace with broken things,iridescent veins, ecstatic bullets, small cracksin the brain, would I know these particular facts,how a phrase scars a cheek, how waterdries love out, this, a thought as casualas any second eviscerates a breath.”

“And shortly after that the blob became a figure. And then, as Bruno got even closer, he saw that the thing was neither a dot nor a speck nor a blob nor a figure, but a person.”

“The fool generalizes the particular; the nerd particularizes the general; some do both; and the wise does neither”