“Though surely to avoid attachments for fear of loss is to avoid life.”

“He was already intuiting that attachment - if only to a squirt gun - made him vulnerable.”

“People seem to get used to anything, and it is a short step from adaptation to attachment.”

“...You can only subject people to anguish who have a conscience. You can only punish people who have hopes to frustrate or attachments to sever; who worry what you think of them. You can really only punish people who are already a little bit good.”

“Though it may be more romantic to picture the bereaved as gaunt, I imagine you can grieve as efficiently with chocolates as with tap water.”

“We'd been assured it wouldn't be painful, though she might experience 'discomfort,' a term beloved of the medical profession that seems to be a synonym for agony that isn't yours.”

“Should what you get up to fail to comport with who you think you are, something is surely inaccurate (and likely optimistic) about who you think you are.”