“Edythe is going to marry his best friend, Garid...Garik-I can't remember, but they will live at Syndlear. He is supposedly a quiet man, who is not considered by most handsome, but neither is he hideous.”

“Why can't I talk to her?""Because you're not a handsome young man.""Well, neither is he!”

“Or, to state his character as it stood in the scale of public opinion, when his friends and critics were in tantrums, he was considered rather a bad man; when they were pleased, he was rather a good man; when they were neither, he was a man whose moral colour was a kind of pepper-and-salt mixture.”

“Lord Rodrik Harlaw was neither fat nor slim; neither tall nor short; neither ugly nor handsome. His hair was brown, as were his eyes, though the short, neat beard he favored had gone grey. All in all, he was an ordinary man, distinguished only by his love of written words.”

“Herschel was a Jew.""And he was my best friend.""He was his best friend.""And I murdered him.”

“And his eyes frighten me, too. They're the eyes of an old man, an old man who's seen so much in life that he no longer cares to go on living. They're not even desperate... just quiet and expectant, and very, very lonely, as if he were quite alone of his own free choice.”