“Watch your life as if it were a film. Absorb everything. What you see, hear, and feel will stamp every alphabet of your work.”

“The library, to me, is the second most sacred physical space on the planet.”

“Oh, I apologize, Padre. I said ‘you will see.’ I forgot that you can’t, in fact, see. So I apologize, but only for the slip of the tongue. Because you and I both know your infliction is something for which the Landlord alone is responsible.”

“Every second I stand here in your temperature-controlled cell,” Jenna said, “I’m forced to suck down the same recycled air that’s going through your nostrils, and that thought absolutely nauseates me.”

“Do you mind?” she asked.“Mind what?”“While you were looking in the mirror I couldn’t help myself and I began fantasizing about you. And I figured if I was going to continue to fantasize about you, the only polite thing to do was to ask your permission. So now I’m doing the polite thing again and asking, ‘do you mind?’”“No, Nina. I don’t mind at all.”Then she leaned down and kissed him.”

“Have you ever given someone a book you enjoyed enormously, with a feeling of envy because they were about to read it for the first time, an experience you could never have again?”

“A lizard brain fired the gun that wounded you, but it was the combination of three brains that orchestrated the elaborate circumstances in which the trigger was pulled. Way back when, the Landlord believed a second brain would endow some of his lower life forms with the capacity for emotional connections. By adding the third brain, he probably planned on having his... higher forms empowered with the ability to not only think before acting, but to feel regret afterwards when their actions were wrong. But that’s not what happened, is it?”