"But you can't make people listen. They have to come round in their own time, wondering what happened and why the world blew up around them. It can't last."
"The books are to remind us what asses and fools we are."
"The zipper displaces the button and a man lacks just that much time to think while dressing at dawn, a philosophical hour, and thus a melancholy hour."
"Digression is the soul of wit. Take the philosophic asides away from Dante, Milton or Hamlet's father's ghost and what stays is dry bones."
"I just want someone to hear what I have to say. And maybe if I talk long enough, it’ll make sense."
"He glanced back at the wall. How like a mirror, too, her face. Impossible; for how many people did you know who reflected your own light to you? People were more often--he searched for a simile, found one in his work--torches, blazing away until they whiffed out. How rarely did other people's faces take of you and throw back to you your own expression, your own innermost trembling thought?"