“The most exquisite pleasure in the practice of medicine comes from nudging a layman in the direction of terror, then bringing him back to safety again.”

“Then again, I am a monopolar depressive descended from monopolar depressives. That's how come I write so good.”

“Hawkins was eloquent and poetic--but most of all he was exquisitely sensitive to a woman's moods. He sensed it when Annie was depressed, though she never told him she was, and he would say just the right thing to cheer her. And when she was elated, he nourished her elation, and kept it alive for weeks instead of fleeting minutes.--"Out, Brief Candle”

“Fear hadn’t come to him yet. Pain hadn’t come where pain would come. There was only the feeling of having done something perfect at last—the taste of a drink from a cold, pure spring.”

“I addressed the scribes directing, speaking over his head. "History is merely a list of surprises," I said. "It can only prepare us to be surprised yet again. Please write that down.”

“Billy was guided by dread and the lack of dread. Dread told him when to stop. Lack of it told him when to move again.”

“What made marriage so difficult back then was yet again that instigator of so many other sorts of heartbreak: the oversize brain.”