“He mentioned a dear friend Morrie had, Maurie Stein, who had first sent Morrie's aphorisms to the Boston Globe. They had been together at Brandeis since the early sixties. Now Stein was going deaf. Koppel imagined the two men together one day, one unable to speak, the other unable to hear. What would that be like?"We will hold hands," Morrie said. "And there'll be a lot of love passing between us. Ted, we've had thirty-five years of friendship. You don't need speech or hearing to feel that.”

“Morrie: And the biggest one of those values, Mitch?Mitch: Yes?Morrie: Your belief in the importance of your marriage.”

“You remember how homesick I used to get, and what long talks we used to have coming from school? We've someway always felt alike about things.""Yes, that's it; we've liked the same things and we've liked them together, without anybody else knowing. And we've had good times, hunting for Christmas trees and going for ducks and making our plum wine together every year. We've never either of us had any other close friend. And now---”

“They didn't mention the jealousy their love of each other had bred in him, that had flourished into deviousness and cruelty. The pain the day had brought would not easily pass, both were aware of that. And yet it had to be, since it was part of what there was.”

“Yet the time-deaf are unable to speak what they know. For speech needs a sequence of words, spoken in time.”

“He could hear trhe voices, the whispers, the sighs, of these souls who were unable to let go of their burdens. ... Pi understood this need to hold on. To let let go of his pain. It had become such a part of him. Who would he be without it? The thought frightened him. So he wandered the halls of the catacombs like the other souls who were half-dead and half-alive.”