“People take their same old lives wherever they go. No place is perfect enough to strip you of that.”

“All I meant was that people take their same old lives wherever they go. No place is perfect enough to strip you of that. And some places have a way of magnifying your demons, or of, I don't know, giving them pep pills.”

“You have not truly met someone until you have looked him or her in the eye as a soul with a place in your future.”

“Thanks to Granna, Werner and Walter had grown up to be highly functioning, productive citizens -- but if you were to ask Walter, Werner had a far easier time of it and lived his life with the sanctified nonchalance of those who will do anything to avoid dissecting their souls.”

“When most of us talk to our dogs, we tend to forget that they're not people.”

“Ira felt as if he'd contracted an all-over emotional itch, as if he'd put on a sweater made of spiritually abrasive wool- but to take it off would leave him dreadfully cold.”

“Of all the virtues, discretion began to seem the most rewarding: it kept people guessing and sometimes, by default, admiring.”