“Though outwardly Kristina maintained that a clean room was a symptom of a diseased mind (for how could she, while studying the world's greatest thinkers, be bothered with such mundane earthly issues as cleaning?), inwardly she hated untidyness and made a point of spending as little time in the room as possible.”

“Whoever's job it was to keep the room clean was clearly not an overachiever.”

“The greatest need of our time is to clean out the enormous mass of mental and emotional rubbish that clutters our minds”

“You must live a very free life.""Me?" she laughed. "I am not who swoops out of the sky to rain fire on pirates!""Yeah, but before this I never did much. I mean I did a lot, but...I lived in a room at a university, and my whole world was in that little room. There was this world inside my head."De la Fitte studied his head as if she could see through his skull to a little globe inside it somewhere.”

“It is possible to be clean in a dirty world.”

“The only slight disconcertance being that in the middle of looking at a paintings [in the Museum of Modern Art] she always found herself desperately needing to take a pee. And grandmother's voice in her ear.'My dear, if you really have to, only clean, very clean rest rooms will do.”