“I never think of policemen's wives; their beauty maddens me like wine.”

“I looked around me at the beautiful sunrise and I was thinking, Yes, yes, everything will be beautiful like this now. I will never be afraid again. I will never spend another day trapped in the color gray.”

“Harton thought that if one squeezed humanity through a wine press, its essence would flow out as drops of policemen.”

“It [discovering Finnish] was like discovering a wine-cellar filled with bottles of amazing wine of a kind and flavour never tasted before. It quite intoxicated me.”

“She told me once that when she was with me she felt like the beautiful woman she never thought she'd be. I can't imagine what could ever make her think she wasn't beautiful enough to anyone, least of all me. She's the beautiful one. The most beautiful one in the world to me.”

“Is that what the wine is for? To help you think?""Oh, the wine. The wine, Costis, is to help hide the truth. It doesn't work. It never has, but I try it every once in a while just in case something in the nature of the wine might have changed.”