“The thing I want you especially to understand is this feeling of divine revelation. I feel that this structure was "out there" all along I just couldn't see it. And now I can! This is really what keeps me in the math game-- the chance that I might glimpse some kind of secret underlying truth, some sort of message from the gods.”

“Nobody ever feels just one way about another person, Margo. We're so much more complicated than that. I can see a million things you want from me, just like the million things I want from you. Some of them are wonderful. Some are awful. Some contradict each other, and some don't make sense at all. But none of those things matter, not really. What matters is what you do about them.”

“I want to just be lazy and I want some of the people around me to be doing things, because that makes me feel comfortable and safe - and I want some of them to be doing nothing at all, because they can be graceful and companionable for me.”

“You see, some things I can teach you. Some you learn from books. But there are things that, well, you have to see and feel.”

“Being in darkness and confusion is interesting to me. But behind it you can rise out of that and see things the way the really are. That there is some sort of truth to the whole thing, if you could just get to that point where you could see it, and live it, and feel it … I think it is a long, long, way off. In the meantime there’s suffering and darkness and confusion and absurdities, and it’s people kind of going in circles. It’s fantastic. It’s like a strange carnival: it’s a lot of fun, but it’s a lot of pain.”

“You scare me, Ryan Daley. Even more than those demons outside that scream for my death. How is it that I want what you want? I’ve spent an eternity feeling powerless. Love did that to me — robbed me of all control. I never expected to feel this way again. I don’t want to feel.’‘Neither did I,’ Ryan rasps, ‘because feeling anything at all was dangerous. If I let myself feel, then maybe I’d have to believe what everyone was saying — that Lauren was dead. But from the moment I laid eyes on “Carmen, you kept getting under my skin. At first, all you did was irritate the hell out of me, bailing me up that way outside my house, inviting yourself along for the ride when all I wanted was to be left alone. But that irritation turned into curiosity, which turned into something else, becoming this chain of, of … feeling that brought me here. I dropped everything for you. I veered left. And I’d do it again in a second. That’s what “feeling” does. It tells you you’re alive, it gives things … I don’t know, proper meaning. You’re still trying to maintain some veneer of independence? Toughness? Do words like that even apply to you? But I see through it, Mercy. I see through you. You’re not that different from me after all, under your armour. Crumbs, Mercy, that’s all I’m after. Just crumbs. It’s not a lot to ask for.”