“Meanwhile with the help of an anecdote I fell in love. Words caravaggio. They have a power.”

“Caravaggio was constantly diverted by the human element during burglaries. Breaking into a house during Christmas, he would become annoyed if the Advent calendar had not been opened up to the date to which it should have been.”

“You must talk to me, Caravaggio. Or am I just a book? Something to be read, some creature to be tempted out of a loch and shot full of morphine, full of corridors, lies, loose vegetation, pockets of stones.”

“She had always wanted words, she loved them; grew up on them. Words gave her clarity, brought reason, shape.”

“In spite of this, our table's status on the Oronsay continued to be minimal, while those at the Captain's Table were constantly toasting to one another's significance. That was a small lesson I learned on the journey. What is interesting and important happens mostly in secret, in places where there is no power. Nothing much of lasting value ever happens at the head table, held together by familiar rhetoric. Those who already have power continue to glide along in the familiar rut they have made for themselves.”

“This was the time in her life that she fell upon books as the only door out of her cell. They became half her world.”

“I am not in love with him, I am in love with ghosts. So is he, he's in love with ghosts.”