“He ran his finger down the hardcover keyboard of book spines. Individual memories of each, particularly his first experience with every title, burned through him”

“Every spirit passing through the world fingers the tangible and mars the mutable, and finally has come to look and not to buy.”

“As the venom streamed down once more, he heard the unmistakable sound of a wolf howling. It would not be long now. Ragnarok had come, and he would see Asgard crushed and burned till he trod on the ashes of all of those who had wronged him.”

“Sometimes the visionary aspect of any particular day comes to you in the memory of it, or it opens to you over time.”

“And old Boughton, if he could stand up out of his chair, out of his decrepitude and crankiness and sorrow and limitation, would abandon all those handsome children of his, mild and confident as they are, and follow after that one son whom he has never known, whom he has favored as one does a wound, and he would protect him as a father cannot, defend him with a strength he does not have, sustain him with a bounty beyond any resource he could ever dream of having.”

“As individuals we are uniquely defined, but within our human experiences (successes, failures, and heartaches) we are connected by a common thread.”

“On into the void he flies, unafraid. There is nothing in mere absence that can cow him. Or loneliness. Or the lack of maps and charts. For he is his own path. And he sees by his own light. We watch him from a great distance. From a vantage point no less subjective, no less absolute. And so it's hard to tell whether he imposes himself on the emptiness, or becomes it.”