“And thus unknowingly, Dor began to serve his sentence -- to hear every plea from every soul who desired more of the thing he had first identified, the thing that moved man further from the simple light of existence and deeper into the darkness of his own obsessions. Time.”

“With his power over time, Dor could have taken anything he desired from this new world. But a man who can take anything will find most things unsatisfying.”

“There was a pier filled with thousands of people, men and women, fathers and mothers and children--so many children--children from the past and the present, children who had not yet been born, side by side, hand in hand, in caps, in short pants, filling the boardwalk and the rides and the wooden platforms, sitting on each other's shoulders, sitting in each other's laps. They were there, or would be there, becuause of the simple mundane things [he] had done in his life, the accidents he had prevented, the rides he had kept safe, the unnoticed turns he had affected every day. And while their lips did not move, [he] heard their voices, more voices then he could have imagined, and a peace came upon him that he had never known before.”

“Dor came from a time before the written word, a timewhen if you wished to speak with someone, you walked to see them. This time was different. The tools ofthis era—phones, computers—enabled people to move at a blurring pace. Yet despite all theyaccomplished, they were never at peace. They constantly checked their devices to see what time it was—the very thing Dor had tried to determine once with a stick, a stone, and a shadow.”

“Man wants to own his existence. But no one owns time.”

“He had his time measures and he had her. That was his life. For as long as he could remember, it had been that way, Dor and Alli, even as children. "I do not want to die," she whispered."You will not die.""I want to be with you.""You are.”

“His father, who for years had refused to speak to Eddie, now lacked the strength to even try. He watched his son with heavy-lidded eyes. Eddie, after struggling to find even one sentence to say, did the only thing he could think of to do: He held up his hands and showed his father his grease-stained fingertips.”