“Anyway, if the Cetagandans really wanted to assassinate you, they'd hardly do it here. They'd slip something subtle under your skin that wouldn't go off for six months, and then would drop you mysteriously and untraceably in your tracks”

“If every kid who said he was going to the library, when he was really off doing something else, actually went to the library, they'd have to send out for more books.”

“I once heard someone on a bus say that this guy had gotten under her skin. And it struck me as a remarkable thought - that someone would affect you so deeply they'd always be a part of you.”

“In the oh-my-God-this-has-to-be-Christmas silence that followed, he struggled to reorder the last six months, to catch up with this reality they'd somehow missed. He wanted her. She wanted him. Was it true?”

“When someone has been mean to you, why would you want to be good to them?' 'You wouldn't want to. That's what makes it hard. You do it anyway. Being good is hard. Much harder than being bad.”

“If you added up all the really significant episodes in your life they'd probably come to less than sixty minutes.”