“how impossibly clean-cut, with its twin sets of twelve, neat as walnut shells.”

“What went on in that head of his? I would soon come to understand that he gave voice to only a fraction of the thoughts that swam behind his eyes. It was not nearly so clean and smooth in there as it seemed. Other lives were houses in that mind, parallel worlds. Maybe we're all built a little that way. But most of us drop hints. Most of us leave clues. My father was more careful.”

“Some say that love is the sweetest feeling, the purest form of joy, but that isn't right. It's not love--it's relief.”

“I should have known by then that it's never the disasters you see coming that finally come to pass; it's the ones you don't expect at all.”

“Who knows how fast a second-guess can travel? Who has ever measured the exact speed of regret?”

“Doesn't every previous era feel like fiction once it's gone?”

“With a little persuasion, any familiar thing can turn abnormal in the mind. Here’s a thought experiment. Consider this brutal bit of magic: A human grows a second human in a space inside her belly; she grows a second heart and a second brain, second eyes and second limbs, a complete set of second body parts as if for use as spares, and then, after almost a year, she expels that second screaming being out of her belly and into the world, alive. Bizarre, isn’t it?”