“Long life wore away everything that was not essential.”

“All male friendships are essentially quixotic: they last only so long as each man is willing to polish the shaving-bowl helmet, climb on his donkey, and ride off after the other in pursuit of illusive glory and questionable adventure.”

“I’d spent my whole life waiting to awake on an ordinary morning in the town that was destined to be my home, in the arms of the woman I was destined to love, knowing the people and doing the work that would make up the changing but essentially invariable landscape of my particular destiny. ”

“It holds my essential stuff, including a book—for true contentment, one must carry a book at all times, and great books so rarely fit, my friends, into one's pocket[…]”

“They had an old-fashioned sincerity...that touched Archy in this time when everything good in life was either synthesised in transgenic cyborg vats or shade-grown in small batches by a Buddhist collective of blind ex-Carmelite Wiccans.”

“He had no idea of how long his life would one day seem to have gone on; how daily present the absence of love would come to feel.“Just watch me,” he said.”

“Success, however, does nothing to diminish the knowledge that failure stalks everything you do. ”