“Now I can see how that can happen. You can fall in love with anybody--a fool, a criminal, a nothing. There are no good rules.”

“After everything that's happened, how can the world still be so beautiful? Because it is.”

“This above all, to refuse to be a victim. Unless I can do that I can do nothing.”

“You can mean more than one.You can mean thousands.I'm not in any immediate danger, I'll say to you.I'll pretend you can hear me.But it's no good, because I know you can't.”

“From nowhere, a word appears: Mesozoic. He can see the word, he can hear the word, but he can't reach the word. He can't attach anything to it. This is happening too much lately, this dissolution of meaning, the entries on his cherished wordlists drifting off into space.”

“Love blurs your vision; but after it recedes, you can see more clearly than ever. It's like the tide going out, revealing whatever's been thrown away and sunk: broken bottles, old gloves, rusting pop cans, nibbled fishbodies, bones. This is the kind of thing you see if you sit in the darkness with open eyes, not knowing the future. The ruin you've made.”

“...we must be a beacon of hope, because if you tell people there's nothing they can do, they will do worse than nothing.”