“And Jakub realized that this child had done no harm, that he was not guilty of anything, and yet had been born with bad eyes and would have them forever. And he reflected further that what he had held against others was something given, something they came into the world with and carried with them like a heavy wire fence. He reflected that he had no privileged right to high-mindedness and that the highest degree of high-mindedness is to love people even though they are murderers.”

“He tried to calm his thoughts, but everything came back to what he'd almost done. Because he hadn't done anything, for years or ever, he had almost done this. Because he had no stories of valor, he had almost done this. Because the efforts he'd made towards creating something like a legacy had failed, he had almost done this.”

“we have no idea anymore what it means to feel guilty. The Communists have the excuse that Stalin misled them. Murderers have the excuse that their mothers didn’t love them.. . .No one could be more innocent, in his soul and conscience, than Oedipus. And yet he punished himself when he saw what he had done.”

“In the past, he had never questioned the fact that he was a prince; like the fact that he was the child of his mother and father, it seemed like something that would never change. Yet look how easily he had lost that rank and privilege! A person's fortune could turn at any time.”

“Connor felt that he could stare for hours into her eyes and he would still not understand her secrets. He knew for certain that she had secrets. For in that short moment when their eyes had met, he had seen her secrets. And he wanted to know them. Something else though, he had seen the flare of recognition in her eyes. Had they met?”

“I could see that the almost mystical aura of this legendary surgeon -- the single-mindedness, the dedication, the skill -- was mere surface. The surgical persona was something he had crafter to protect himself. But what he had created was a prison. Anytime he strayed from the professional to the personal, he knew what to expect: pain.”