“This so gnawed at him on some nights that he lay awake wondering just how many unknown and similarly inconsequential accidents and bits of happenstance were at this moment occurring or failing to occur in order to ensure he took his next breath, and the next.”

“His eyes were closing again, all of their own accord, so that he lay in red, pain-filled darkness. It occured to him that he was dying and he didn’t care. ‘He’s alive!’ Blue said again ‘He’s breathing!’ ‘I can’t see him breathing.”

“Some nights, alone, he thinks of her, and some nights, alone, she thinks of him. Some night these thoughts, separated by miles and time zones, occur at the same objective moment, and Ray and Mirabelle are connected without ever knowing it.”

“The difference between one moment and the next occurs because zero does not exist!”

“a soldier lives always for the next battle, because he knows that before it arrives impossible changes can occur in his favor.”

“Then, as his planet killed him, it occurred to Kynes that his father and all the other scientists were wrong, that the most persistent principles of the universe were accident and error.”