“Halfway through his reclusion, Arredondo experienced more than once that almost timeless time. In the first of the house’s three patios there was cistern with a frog in it. It never occurred to Arredondo to think that the frog’s time, which borders on eternity, was what he himself sought.”

“Nevermore," Lolli said. "That's what Luis calls it, because there are three rules: Never more than once a day, never more than a pinch at a time, and never more than two days in a row.”

“Anticipation! It occurred to him that his anticipation was more pleasant to him than the experiencing.”

“The world does not move through time as if it were a straight line, proceeding from the past to the future. Instead time moves through and within us, in endless spirals. Eternity does not mean infinite time, but simply timelessness.”

“Few people think more than two or three times a year; I have made an international reputation for myself by thinking once or twice a week.”

“For the first time in a long time, he didn't think of the past. And of all the things he'd lost. He thought only of the present, and what he had. And how it was so much more than he deserved. And he prayed then that he would never, ever lose it.”