“Of this he was certain: to be in her presence was to know delight in a more vivid sense than ever he had before.”

“He realised, more vividly than ever before, that art had two constant, two unending preoccupations: it is always meditating upon death and it is always thereby creating life.”

“A certain person may have, as you say, a wonderful presence; I do not know. What I do know is that he has a perfectly delightful absence.”

“He could think of only one reason for her to be there, though it madeno sense after what he'd said to her. Words were weapons, his father hadtaught him that, and he'd wanted to hurt Clary more than he'd ever wanted to hurt any girl. In fact, he wasn't sure he had ever wanted to hurt a girl before. Usually he just wanted them, and then wanted them to leave him alone.”

“It was certainly not consolation that Kashiwagi sought in beauty. .. What he loved was that for a short while after his breath had brought beauty into existence in the air, his own clubfeet and gloomy thinking remained there, more clearly and more vividly than before. The uselessness of beauty, the fact that beauty which had passed through his body left no mark there whatsoever, that it changed absolutely nothing- it was this that Kashiwagi loved.”

“But ever since he had been a child, he wanted to know the world, and this was much more important to him than knowing God and learning about man's sins.”