“The problem with anger against God is that it's impossible to go higher in the system to complain.”

“The great systems that inform the world about the truth and life invariably claim to be absolutely truthful and well-balanced. In reality they are quaking bridges built out of yearning.”

“When you assess something, you are forced to assume that a linear scale of values can be applied to it. Otherwise no assessment is possible. Every person who says of something that it is good or bad or a bit better than yesterday is declaring that a points system exists; that you can, in a reasonably clear and obvious fashion, set some sort of a number against an achievement.But never at any time has a code of practice been laid down for the awarding of points. No offense intended to anyone. Never at any time in the history of the world has anyone—for anything ever so slightly more complicated than the straightforward play of a ball or a 400-meter race—been able to come up with a code of practice that could be learned and followed by several different people, in such a way that they would all arrive at the same mark. Never at any time have they been able to agree on a method for determining when one drawing, one meal, one sentence, one insult, the picking of one lock, one blow, one patriotic song, one Danish essay, one playground, one frog, or one interview is good or bad or better or worse than another.”

“When people are going to be taken from you anyway, then it would be better if you had never come to care for them.”

“When you're young, you think that sex is the culmination of intimacy. Later you discover that it's barely the beginning.”

“The cookies combine butter and spices in such a way that you could eat a hundred of them and only realize how sick you are after it's too late.”

“When you let your mind go blank,' he said, 'or when you stop talking for a long time, something happens. Time becomes different. It goes away. It doesn't come back until you start to say something.”