“I think if you decide that any book is about Only One Thing you're probably wrong. Even if that thing is in there.”

“Sometimes life is hard. Things go wrong—in life and in love and in business and in friendship and in health and in all the other ways that life can go wrong. And when things get tough, this is what you should do: make good art. . . . Someone on the internet thinks what you’re doing is stupid or evil or it’s all been done before: make good art. Probably things will work out somehow, eventually time will take the sting away, and it doesn’t even matter. Do what only you can do best: make good art.”

“There's atoms, which is things that is too small to see, that's what we're all made of. And there's things that are smaller than atoms, and that's Particle Physics."Bod nodded and decided that Scarlett's father was probably interested in imaginary things.”

“There are people who think that things that happen in fiction do not really happen. These people are wrong.”

“I think . . . I said things to Silas. He'll be angry.''If he didn't care about you, you couldn't upset him,' was all she said.”

“Death’s a funny thing. I used to think it was a big, sudden thing, like a huge owl that would swoop down out of the night and carry you off. I don’t anymore. I think it’s a slow thing. Like a thief who comes to your house day after day, taking a little thing here and a little thing there, and one day you walk round your house and there’s nothing there to keep you, nothing to make you want to stay. And then you lie down and shut up forever. Lots of little deaths until the last big one.”

“This isn't about what is . . . it's about what people think is. It's all imaginary anyway. That's why it's important. People only fight over imaginary things.”