“Though I no longer liked him or respected him, the thought of his disapproval frightened me.”

“Reliving his degradation had struck some spark in him and it was glowing now like a blown-on coal.”

“His thoughts were clearly still shoving him further away, toward some ultimate dark drama that he might or might not have actually lived through but whose telling would let out the pressure inside his skull.”

“Thoughts are thoughts and that's all they are.”

“I feel like my head is finally the right size. I feel like it finally fits around my mind.”

“Other people's devotions embarrassed me, perhaps because, like other people's kisses, they rarely looked genuine when viewed too closely.”

“Literature had torn Tessa and me apart, or prevented us from merging in the first place. That was its role in the world, I'd started to fear: to conjure up disagreements that didn't matter and inspire people to act on them as though they mattered more than anything. Without literature, humans would all be one. Warfare was simply literature in arms. The pen was the reason man invented the sword.”