“It is ever the lot of children to accept their circumstances as universal, and their particularities as general.”

“Altruism is the kind of pie best eaten with a lot of gravy and little inspection of the kind of kidney it's stuffed with.”

“In all things we become acclimated; this is our strength in wartime, and also our weakness. What is a principle, if it alter with circumstance?But what is a man, if he cannot change to meet changed times? And if he can change to meet changed times, is he a man, or several in succession?”

“He lives in kind of a different world from the rest of us. You know? The kind of world where electricity is a lot of invisible spiders. The kind of world where there's organ music that gets louder when he eats refined sugar.”

“ We enter a time of calamity. Blood on the tarmac. Fingers in the juicer. Towers of air frozen in the lunar wastes. Models dead on the runways, with their legs facing backward. Children with smiles that can’t be undone. Chicken shall rot in the aisles. See the pillars fall.”

“We were as strangers, in the moment-as intimate as strangers-for strangers know more of us, and can judge of us more without reproach than ever those we love.”

“I hope,' muttered Jasper, 'we do not ever shop again at a place where vampires can buy clip-on bow ties. You would think with all of eternity in front of them, they could take the time to learn a simple knot.”