“Books have a curious effect on those with certain predispositions to fall into obsession.”

“It is curious how people take it for granted that they have a right to preach at you and pray over you as soon as your income falls below a certain level.”

“Just curious. Like James and Victoria had been curious in the beginning? The thought of Victoria made me tremble, thought the one thing they seemed certain of was that it had not been her. Not this time. She would stick to her obsessed pattern. This was just someone else, a stranger.”

“There are certain books in the history of the world that should never have been written. This book makes all those look like masterpieces.”

“But if love were convenient there wouldn't be millions of songs and movies and books obsessing over it, or therapists and doctors consoling all the people falling in and out of it.”

“These are the folk who may pass into the kingdom of heaven: the grief-stricken, lovers, scholars of a certain obsessive disposition. Brute beasts. Women who have become as men and men who have become as women. Writers of books with long titles. Only those knights who have failed to touch the Grail. Industrious women. You, and I, and a boy named Oleg, and a girl with blue hair.”