“I spent the best years of my life atoning for something I didn't do, something my parents didn't do, something done just about before I was ever even born. I got no complaints with that, but I'm about all atoned out, and I ain't yet gotten round to atoning for the things I did do.”

“I'm down here, trying to live, trying to deal with the real world, while you're hiding, bitching, fucking everyone's shit up but your own, so shut up, just shut the fuck up. Thirty-two million copies, thirty-two million copies, that's what you got for your pain. What do I get for mine? What does anyone get for theirs? Nothing, not a fucking thing, they get another goddamned day of it and another goddamned day of it after that, so just shut up, will you? Will you just shut up?”

“So desperate was Kugel for things to turn out for the best, proclaimed Professor Jove, that he couldn't stop worrying about the worst. Hope, said Professor Jove, was Solomon Kugel's greatest failing.”

“I kind of like it up here, Kugel said. It's got a certain fatalistic charm, a certain je ne sais fucked.”

“Oh no he does not! He does NOT read James Freaking Patterson. Our salvation - our provider…we must be out of our minds. I happen to find Patterson thought provoking and suspenseful. You what? Did you just say you find James Patterson thought provoking and suspenseful? Jesus Christ open your eyes! Are you so desperate to believe that you're defending James Patterson?!”

“He imagined the scene at the gates of heaven to be not unlike that at the finish line of a long and grueling marathon: everyone high-fiving, hugging, collapsing, elated that it’s over, yes, it’s finally over, pouring cups of water over one another’s heads and saying, Holy shit, dude, that was fucking brutal. I am never doing that again.”

“He took the diary from Mother's hand and turned it over. The heartbreaking something, he read, of a tragic whatever.”