“Considerable self-confidence was an understatement. People knew when he entered a room… He tipped the boat. You had to scramble to keep your equilibrium.”

“The boy was not insensitive, he knew; but he had the facility and self-confidence that came of looking at fate not as a master but as an equal.”

“When you ride in a boat and watch the shore, you might assume that the shore is moving. But when you keep your eyes closely on the boat, you can see that the boat moves. Similarly, if you examine many things with a confused mind, you might suppose that your mind and nature are permanent. But when you practice intimately and return to where you are, it will be clear that there is nothing that has unchanging self.”

“Gillard is as likeable as Rudd is charmless. She is self-deprecating; he is ludicrously vainglorious. She is a mistress of understatement; he is a ranter.”

“The Mouser sighed. The moment had come, he knew, as it always did, when outward circumstances and inner urges commanded an act, when curiosity and fascination tipped the scale of caution, when the lure of a vision and an adventure became so great and deep-hooking that he must respond to it or have his inmost self-respect eaten away.”

“It was as if pain were a room he had entered and the door had been locked behind him.”