“And try to remember what we discussed, Susannah. A mediator is someone who helps others resolve conflicts. Not someone who, er, kicks them in the face.”

“In a school community, someone who reads a book for some secretive purpose, other than discussing it, is strange. What was she reading for?”

“...the conflicts made him an indecisive mediator - a man, as someone had once observed, who couldn't keep his feet out of the shit on either side because he couldn't get the fencepost out of his ass.”

“We are friends for life. When we’re together the years fall away. Isn’t that what matters? To have someone who can remember with you? To have someone who remembers how far you’ve come?”

“Books are memory. They remember their contents and pass them on. They keep track of who claims ownership, who they were given by and for what occasion. They mediate, in their margins, disagreements between reader and author.”

“Discussion is impossible with someone who claims not to seek the truth, but already to possess it.”