“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.”

“Can you lose everything, you ever had planned? Can you sit down again, and play another hand? Could you risk everything, for the chance of being alone?Under pressure find the grace, or would you come undone?That's how legends are made, at least that's what they say?”

“We know how ninety-nine percent of the universe works," he told Carter shortly after they met, "and that's the clockworks, that's what we build with. But the other one percent makes the clockworks wind down. That's inertia. No one knows how that works, but it does. It's that one percent mystery that's the way of our maker. Put everything together, energy and inertia, the explicable and the inexplicable, and that's how you and I make our living.”

“Life has meaning and we grown-ups know what it is is the universal lie that everyone is supposed to believe. Once you become an adult and you realize that's not true, it's too late.”

“It's really not so good to have time. Rush, scramble, desperation, this missed, that left behind, those others too big to fit into such a small space--that's the way life was meant to be. You're supposed to be too late for some things. Don't worry about it.”

“I want to believe you, but if that's true, I just don't get it. Why does loving somebody mean you have to hurt them just as much? I mean, if that's the way it goes, what's the point of loving someone?”