“It was strange how once you saw a rat wearing clothes, it became slightly disgusting to imagine the animal naked.”

“If Conrad remembered the skinny, frightened girl he'd held for one brief moment on a frigid Boston street corner, he showed no signs of it when we met...Even as I tried to urge hum back against the pillows, he looked at me with wild eyes. "What happened to your leather jacket?" he asked. "Shh," I said, trying to sooth him. "There's no leather jacket." "You were wearing it the first time I saw you," he said, frowning slightly.”

“Human beings, in their natural state, are unpredictable, erratic, and unhappy. It is only once their animal instincts are controlled that they can be responsible, dependable, and content.”

“It strikes me how strange people are. You can see them every day, you can think you know them and then you found out you hardly know them at all.”

“Liza made a sudden decision. "I'll be your friend," she announced. she had trouble speaking the words but was glad once she had spoken them. She did not really want to be friends with an enormous rat of questionable sanity, but it seemed the right thing to say.”

“Who taught you to go around falling on rats ans squishing on hats? Terrible, terrible. Must always be mindful of your manners.”

“It's so strange how life works: You want something and you wait and wait and feel like it's taking forever to come. Then it happens and it's over and all you want to do is curl back up in that moment before things changed.”