“Take care-there is no force more powerful than that of an unbridled imagination.”

“It struck me that the chief obstacle to marital contentment was this perpetual gulf between the well-founded, commendable pessimism of women and the sheer dumb animal optimism of men, the latter a force more than any other responsible for the lamentable state of the world.”

“I can imagine anything except having no imagination.”

“There's nothing more embarrassing than to have earned the disfavor of a perceptive animal.”

“It was the pleasure that a liar takes in his lie as it enters the world wearing the accent and raiment of the truth, sounding so right and plausible that--if he is any kind of liar at all--he begins, himself, to believe it. It was the pleasure that a maker of golems takes as the force of his words, the rhythm and accuracy of his alphabetical spells, blow life into the cold clay nostrils, and the great stony hand unclenches and reaches for his own.”

“People with Books. What, in 2007, could be more incongruous than that? It makes me want to laugh."[Afterword]”

“It was not what he expected from a foulmouthed flower of bohemia, but he had a feeling there was both more and less to her than that.”