“I walked with them, as crowds have that effect on me, I want to do what they do, to journey towards some point of revelation, which of course never comes”

“I had made a decision, although I hardly knew it yet. It's often that way with decisions, they're made in some hidden part of us and the awareness secretes itself slowly into that conscious part of us that imagines it decides.”

“Is it fair to have given us the memory of what was and the desire of what could be when we must suffer what is?”

“I hoped that grief was similar to the other emotions. That it would end, the way happiness did. Or laughter.”

“Why do they blame me for all their little failings? They use my name as if I spent my entire days sitting on their shoulders, forcing them to commit acts they would otherwise find repulsive. 'The devil made me do it.' I have never made one of them do anything. Never. They live their own tiny lives. I do not live their lives for them.”

“Nina felt an inordinate pleasure, a pleasure that seemed to creep up on her the way the mud oozed through her barefoot toes.”

“He stares at me so darkly, so hungily that I can only nod. Agree. Of course, I feel it. "I do", I admit.”