“There were many things they simply didn't talk about: between them, silence was not so much a form of evasion as a way for solitary people to exist in a family.”

“What solitary people my family were! It amazed me that two of its members had ever gotten together to produce the others. But then solitary people pretending not to be – that must be how families start up, and how the race of the lonely has grown so numerous.”

“Anyway, solitary people interest me. There are so many different ways of being solitary.''I know just what you mean,' said X. 'I know exactly what you're going to say. Different kinds of solitude. Enforced solitude and voluntary solitude.''Quite,' said Viktoria. 'There's no need to go into it further. But when people understand one another without speaking, it can often leave them with very little to talk about, don't you think?”

“At first Silas liked the subjects simply because of their strangeness, but slowly he began to believe in the possibilities of what he was reading, in a world filled with secrets and magic. When he was younger, he’d suspected his father believed in many of these things too, so that made it easy for them to talk. As he grew older, Silas began to see the glimmers of hieroglyphic logic behind the occult. There was a reason for these oddities to exist, perhaps as strange connections between the mind and the things people feared or desired. Magic was a conversation. Ghosts were real, and they were watching because something had happened that necessitated their presence.”

“Far too many people—many of them academics, many politicians—continue to jabber about a supposed 'special relationship' between our two countries.I used to think that no such thing existed. Recently, I have become convinced that it does, and that it is in fact a Specially Bad Relationship.”

“It was thought in the Middle Ages that people simply make many observations, and the observations themselves suggest the laws. But it does not work that way. It takes much more imagination than that.So the next thing we have to talk about is where the new ideas come from. Actually, it does not make any difference, as long as they come.”