“Grady felt a chill echo, the kind that comes when, in an original situation, one has the sensation of its all having occurred before: if we know the past, and live the present, is it possible that we dream the future?”

“There's lots of things you don't know. All kinds of strange things . . . mostly they happened before we were born: that makes them seem to me so much more real.”

“Have you never heard what the wise man say : all of the future exists in the past.”

“Everybody has to feel superior to somebody," she said. "But it's customary to present a little proof before you take the privilege.”

“What kind of things did you have in mind, kid?' Clyde said this with a smile that exposed a slight lewdness: the young man who laughed at seals and bought balloons had reversed his profile, and the new side, which showed a harsher angle, was the one Grady was never able to defend herself against: its brashness so attracted, so crippled her, she was left desiring only to appease.”

“Even for those who dislike champagne, myself among them, there are two champagnes one can't refuse: Dom Perignon and the even superior Cristal, which is bottled in a natural-colored glass that displays its pale blaze, a chilled fire of such prickly dryness that, swallowed, seems not to have been swallowed at all, but instead to have turned to vapors on the tongue and burned there to one damp sweet ash.”

“It may be that there is no place for any of us. Except we know there is somewhere; and if we found it, but lived there only a moment, we could count ourselves blessed.”