“His mistake was to think that, by seeing objectively, he was seeing the street in its entirety. What he didn't see -- what he completely missed -- was the strangest and most remarkable sight in the whole of Lough Street: an unshaven, wild-eyed man sitting in a parked van, staring at an empty house through binoculars and furiously taking notes.”

“Often, I find, it is better to forget what you know, and to believe only what you can see with your own two eyes.”

“People change, he thought -it's truism- but how? Our life is confined to days, after all: Sunday to Monday, dusk to dawn. What great alterations can take place in someone between breakfast and lunch? Is it possible to wake up as one person and fall asleep as another?”

“Everyone who has eyes to see can see that if the God of Abraham exists, He is an utter psychopath--and the God of Nature too. If you can't see these things just by looking, you have simply closed your eyes to the realities of our world.”

“I watched their reactions and emotions, especially to understand what was what I was doing wrong. But then I realized that if I could see these people and take note of everything I saw, I could write a good song. ”

“But hope, I can tell you, is an exhausting emotion; perhaps, along with fear, the most exhausting of all. It is like juggling eggs: the hope is the shell, and inside is despair. A single crack and the despair might spill everywhere, stain everything.”

“MacKenzie started to look frightened and Valor looked like he was going to kill somebody if they didn't stop scaring his girlfriend. At the same time, Victor looked like he was ready to step in and take control of the situation. And if these suits decided to pull out some guns, I could see where they might end up as a set of life-sized garden gnomes.”