“It was the first time I had ever seen someone die, and it wasn't what I expected...I stood there waiting for something momentous to happen, for someone to say something profound, but there was nothing...I still had the childish notion that since my life was so important, all lives were so important. Since my death would be so cataclysmic, all deaths would be so cataclysmic.”

“At times it felt like I was killing myself. And yet the only thing I could recall at that moment was how much fun it had been, and how wonderful it was to do this for a living.”

“I'm starting to realize that I can't be a child forever, that I don't want to be a child forever. I've had my turn, and now it's time to grow up.”

“I really wanted to get into this art school about two years before I started working at the Grille. I applied and waited. But when the acceptance letter arrived, my heart had done some changing so that being molded by God was far more exciting than the acceptance.... I changed in the meantime. The thing that was so important to me when I first wanted it wasn't as vital when it happened. God had changed my heart in the process." (Buck)”

“Aren’t you going to say, I told you so?” Hadrian whispered.“What would be the point in that?”“Oh, so you’re saying that you’re going to hang on to this and throw it at me at some future, more personally beneficial moment?”“I don’t see the point in wasting it now, do you?”

“I'm taking inorganic chem and physics not because I want to but because I have to. Not every doctor wants to be a scientist. Some of us just want to take care of sick people. I can't help thinking that medicine is more closely aligned to the humanities than to the sciences. I can't help thinking that I could learn more about being a good doctor from William Shakespeare than I could from Isaac Newton. After all, isn't understanding people at least as important as understanding pathology?”

“He looked so profoundly disappointed in me that I wondered for a moment if he was someone I knew.”