“Life has to be discovered all the time. you can never say "I have done everything I can up to the age of 25, and now I have to settle down and be a responsible, boring adult in a responsible, boring world." You don't have to do that. ”

“to be the man you have to beat the man and im the man”

“I always knew I'd be a sailor. In my cradle, playing with my toes, I knew it. What else could there have been? The sailors had made my blood move before I was born, I now believe. As my mother stood one night upon the shit-smelling Bermondsey shore with me in her belly, the sailors had sung out there across the great river, and their siren song had come to the shell-pink enormity that was my listening ear newly formed in the amniotic fluid.Or so I believe.”

“It was the first smile of my life. Of course, that is a ridiculous thing to say; I had been smiled at often, the big man had smiled at me not a minute since. And yet I say: it was the first smile, because it was the first that ever went straight into me like a needle too thin to be seen.”

“I can excuse everything but boredom. Boring people don't have to stay that way. ”

“You can't just skip the boring parts.""Of course I can skip the boring parts.""How do you know they're boring if you don't read them?""I can tell.""Then you can't say you've read the whole play.""I think I can live a happy life, Meryl Lee, even if I don't read the boring parts of The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark.""Who knows?" she said. "Maybe you can't.”

“Everything. I have done everything you wanted...You asked that the child be taken. I took him. You cowered before me. I was frightening...I have reordered time...I have turned the world upside down...And I have done it all for you. I am exhausted from living up to your expectations.”