“What are you talking about?' cried Lukashka. 'We must go through the middle gates, of course.”

“He remembered his cry of the night before: We must meet in the middle of the Bridge!”

“I must talk, and you must listen, for we are engaged here in the most important pursuit in history: the search for meaning. What is the nature of being a person? What is the best way to go about being a person? How did we come to be, and what will become of us when we are no longer? In short: What are the rules of this game, and how might we best play it?”

“I read this on the gates to a village cemetery: What you are, we used to be. What we are, you’re going to be. — It puts things in perspective, doesn’t it?”

“People always go on about how fantastic relationships are in the beginning, and of course everyone hates relationships when they end, but what about the middles? the middles where you know everything there is to know. Where you can look at the person you love and know what they're thinking, see something on the telly and know how they'd react;When you know exactly what they'd wear to come round and see you.”

“You see, this happened a few months ago, but it's still going on right now, and it ought to make us feel ashamed when we talk like we know what we're talking about when we talk about love.”