“The momentary darkness gave way to scores of small glowing lights. Blaise stepped into a candlelit room filled with people and furniture. 'Where are we?" he asked Livia. "How can a whole other room be here? There were only two rooms on the top floor.”

“They wordlessly excused each other for not loving each other as much as they had planned to. There were empty rooms in the house where they had meant to put their love, and they worked together to fill these rooms with midcentury modern furniture. ("Birthmark").”

“But even an ordinary secretary or a housewife or a teenager can, within their own small ways, turn on a small light in a dark room.”

“Following the Noble Path is like entering a dark room with a light in the hand; the darkness will all be cleared away, and the room will be filled with light.”

“There were three of them in the room now, where only two had first come in. Death was in the room with the two of them.”

“I built and I built— heaven knows I have done that well. Those skyscrapers, full of tenants, floor after floor, and not a single room containing you. You asked why I came here to Rome. I never cared about the news. I came to be in the same room as you, even if I had to build that room, fill it with people, with typewriters, the rest. I only hope you understand that the paper was for you.”