“Blackouts can be fun if approached with the right mindset. You just can't sweat the fact that you've lost a small portion of your life for all eternity. Occasionally, little bubbles of memory will float up like surreal Mylar party balloons at unexpected times throughout the net day and start piecing together a colorful, if incomplete, version of reality.”

“I was feeling all fertile and blossoming there for a second. And now I just feel like me, on earth. I was floating a little bit there before. I was like a very small version of a Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade balloon. I was puffy and needed handlers. I was lumbering through the air, a couple inches off the ground. I was veering toward lampposts.”

“Fun, like champagne bubbles, can't completely fill you up.”

“I reflected that for all the people you lost touch with or couldn't hold on to, life occasionally made up for it by giving you the right person at the right time.”

“It's all right. I'm not upset. After all, they were just things. When you've lost your mother and your father, you can't care so much about things, can you?”

“When you have all eternity, the word hurry is relative.""And the guards, being mortal, have less of it, and their version of slugglish doesn't approach your version of fast?""Something very like that.”