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

“Just about every adult human being back then had a brain weighing about three kilogrammes! There was no end to the evil schemes that a thought machine that oversized couldn't imagine and execute. So I raise this question, although there is nobody around to answer it: Can it be doubted that three-kilogramme brains were once nearly fatal defects in the evolution of the human race?”

“The girls screamed. They covered themselves with their hands and turned their backs and so on, and made themselves utterly beautiful.”

“Like so many Americans, she was trying to construct a life that made sense from things she found in gift shops.”

“...this is a hard world to be ludicrous in, with so many human beings so reluctant to laugh, so incapable of thought, so eager to believe and snarl and hate.”

“The heartbreaking necessity of lying about reality and the heartbreaking impossibilty of lying about it”

“But she did look back, and I love her for that, because it was so human. So she was turned to a pillar of salt. So it goes. People aren't supposed to look back. I'm certainly not going to do it anymore.”