“...that the basic transaction of life itself was a sad, endless amalgam of public endurance and private indulgence.”

“There weren't words for it. It was like trying to photograph a sunset or telling the story of a dream dreamt, a private intensity, and attempts at its reproduction could only be met with a shrug.”

“Sometimes, the world suddenly seemed equal to what I required of it. But, otherwise, I was under the world, a cockroach-man scuttling beneath stones in filth, scrambling from the light. Or else I was above the world, as certain and mighty as a fundamental force, as electricity. The sadness of always being at a distance from things, above or else beneath.”

“Frederick knows better than to believe, as his wife sometimes claims to, that all things happen for a reason. Things happen; it is up to us to invent for them a purpose.”

“But the actual object, that bundle of papers, is a telltale heart. She buried it long ago, and still it thumps its maddening beat.”

“An exercise in power should never be merely and indulgence.”

“I sometimes look into the face of my dog Stan and see a wistful sadness and existential angst, when all he is actually doing is slowly scanning the ceiling for flies.”