“Who are they now? They are the simplest version possible of themselves... They are out from under everything ever piled on top of them.”

“what was astonishing to him was how people seemed to run out of their own being, run out of whatever the stuff was that made them who they were and, drained of themselves, turn into the sort of people they would once have felt sorry for. it was as though while their lives were rich and full they were secretly sick of themselves and couldn’t wait to dispose of their sanity and their health and all sense of proportion so as to get down to that other self, the true self, who was a wholly deluded fuckup.”

“That people were manifold creatures didn’t come as a surprise to the Swede, even if it was a bit of a shock to realize it anew when someone let you down. What was astonishing to him was how people seemed to run out of their own being, run out of whatever the stuff was that made them who they were and, drained of themselves, turn into the sort of people they would once have felt sorry for”

“What is astonishing is that we, who had no idea how anything was going to turn out, now know exactly what happened.”

“That can happen when people die, the argument with them drops away and people so flawed while they were drawing breath that at times they were all but unbearable now assert themselves in the most appealing way, and what was least to your liking the day before yesterday becomes in the limousine behind the hearse a cause not only for sympathetic amusement but for admiration”

“... a nervous, undernourished girl who continually looked down the front of her gown as though there was some sort of construction project going on under her clothes.”

“So. Now you know the worst thing I have ever done. I fucked my own family's dinner.”