“Diabetes is passed that way -- over and down, like a knight in chess.”

“The force with which he wanted it both ways made him grit his teeth. What kind of fool wanted it only one way?”

“Yvette had never talked about her marriage - she was a smart girl, and she knew you had no right to complain about someone you got all the way to the altar with. You made that choice, even if you were a child when you did it, and the marriage vow was sacred.”

“He was acting like the man he wanted to be, in hopes that he could become him. He would keep acting until he couldn't stand it anymore, and then he would be the man he was.”

“Now, alone on the roof, Valentine looked at her shoes and wished people would either stay or go away, but not constantly coming back and leaving again.”

“At the simplicity of the gesture, he felt a pang: the raw nerve of his loneliness exposed.”

“Children were experiments, and his had failed.”