“Matter of fact, when it came to manscaping, all he had was a dark stripe that ran between his belly button and his... You know, maybe size did matter, she thought.”

“She remained silent. There was nothing left to say. He'd said it all the night before. He had to end it. He could never leave his wife. And, in fact, she had known this. Although she loved him - and truly she did - he wasn't hers. He belonged to his wife. She'd earned him. It didn't matter that he was her first love or that she was his passion. It didn't matter that they had loved one another for more than half their lives. It didn't matter that he had married his wife on the rebound. It didn't matter that he didn't love the woman. It didn't even matter that they had turned into some soap-opera cliche. He was married to someone else and that meant that she was leftovers and destined to remain on the periphery in the shadow of another woman's marriage. But no more. She was well and truly sick of it. ”

“When Marco Polo came at last to Cathay, seven hundred years ago, did he not feel--and did his heart not falter as he realized--that this great and splendid capital of an empire had had its being all the years of his life and far longer, and that he had been ignorant of it? That it was in need of nothing from him, from Venice, from Europe? That it was full of wonders beyond his understanding? That his arrival was a matter of no importance whatever? We know that he felt these things, and so has many a traveler in foreign parts who did not know what he was going to find. There is nothing that cuts you down to size like coming to some strange and marvelous place where no one even stops to notice that you stare about you.”

“People usually asked her if she had a belly button. Of course she had a belly button. She couldn't explain how. She didn't really want to know.”

“All night long, in his cell, he burned with hatred. It did not matter what he thought, it was how he felt; and alone in the darkness of his cell, with the muttering noises of the tank around him, he felt like murdering the universe.”

“Yes, he had made a good choice after all when he had chosen the God of the green pasture and the still waters! He was very powerful, and the fact that He expected you to think for yourself and do something in return for His help did not matter, as long as you could work things out.”