“Askade took the battertoast, looked at it blearily. "I can't rewire it into a death ray without some extra parts," he said, and took a bite. "Hm. Tastes okay. What's the problem?”

“I long for the simplicity of theatre. I want lessons learned, comeuppances delivered, people sorted out, all before your bladder gets distractingly full. That's what I want. What I know is what we all know, whether we'll admit it or not: every attempt to impose the roundness of a well-made play on reality produces a disaster. Life just isn't so, nor will it be made so.”

“Then the syncretist Ficino, sitting hunched with Lorenzo standing at his side, put all the ideas together, along with Lorenzo's new song: chariots blazing between the worlds as gods fought rebel gods, the destruction of a city -- a planet? -- by fire, beasts beyond imagining both to terrify and befriend the heroes."It needs a title," Signorina Scala said.Pulci had his mouth open, but Ficino beat him to the pun."It shall be dedicated to Isis and Mars," he said, "and we will call it Stella Martis.”

“The worm drives helically through the woodAnd does not know the dust left in the boreOnce made the table integral and good;And suddenly the crystal hits the floor.Electrons find their paths in subtle ways,A massless eddy in a trail of smoke;The names of lovers, light of other daysPerhaps you will not miss them. That's the joke.The universe winds down. That's how it's made.But memory is everything to lose;Although some of the colors have to fade,Do not believe you'll get the chance to choose.Regret, by definition, comes too late;Say what you mean. Bear witness. Iterate.”

“We're not lost. We're locationally challenged.”

“Every book is three books, after all; the one the writer intended, the one the reader expected, and the one that casts its shadow when the first two meet by moonlight.”

“He wouldn't write a letter because he couldn't without beginning it 'Dear Sylvia' and ending it 'Yours sincerely' or 'truly' or 'affectionately.' He's that sort of precise imbecile. I tell you he's so formal he can't do without all the conventions there are and so truthful he can't use half of them.”