“Near below peak of mount Merbabu in Java, there is a forest known as the devil market. I had been there once. And when you are there, you will sense the crowd, voices of nothingness. Your mind will say it is just accustics effect of the nature, but your heart will tell you something totally different.”

“You will see the effects of dark secrets making themselves known-- via their minds and bodies and via the stories your friends...will begin telling you...The only payback for all of this-- for the conversion of their once-young hearts into tar--will be that you will love your friends more, even though they have made you see the universe as an emptier and scarier place...”

“I always say, if you must mount the gallows, give a jest to the crowd, a coin to the hangman, and make the drop with a smile on your lips.”

“And loneliness. I should say something of loneliness. The panic, the sweeping hysteria that comes not when you are without others, but when you are without yourself, adrift. I should describe the filthy province of mind, the blighted district inside, the place so crowded you cannot raise the lids of your eyes. Your shoulders are drawn and your head has fallen and your chest is bruised by the constant assault of your heart. (p. 37)”

“They drove through the intersection and turned left on a street Mo had once known like his favorite song. It was strange to him now and he wondered if that was because of the disease or just the natural effect of change itself, the tendency of things to move around on you, to shift when you weren't looking. So that you could get back and be a stranger in your own places.”

“Once you've crossed over into that realm of nothingness, your story only really stays in the minds of those closest to you. And when they too vanish...”