“If there is such a person on the planet, then he or she—this self-appointed arbiter of “appropriateness”—deserves to be confronted with as many “inappropriate” transgressions as possible.”

“Each person deserves a day away in which no problems are confronted, no solutions searched for.”

“Hatred. Something almost as physical as walls, pianos, or nurses. She could almost touch the destructive energy leaking out of her body. She allowed the feeling to emerge, regardless of whether it was good or bad; she was sick of self-control, of masks, of appropriate behavior. Veronika wanted to spend her remaining two or three days of life behaving as inappropriately as she could.”

“How inappropriate to call this planet "Earth," when it is clearly "Ocean.”

“Looking back, it was the thing in his life that shamed him the most: the times he was purposefully, calculatingly mean to Alice. It was those moments, and there had been many of them, that indicated to him that he was not a good person. He got mad at her for many things, but it was always really for the same thing: that she possessed his love and he couldn't seem to get it back.She didn't deserve it, which was to say she deserved better”

“It is possible for one never to transgress a single law and still be a bastard.”