"Sometimes, you read a book and it fills you with this weird evangelical zeal, and you become convinced that the shattered world will never be put back together unless and until all living humans read the book. And then there are books like An Imperial Affliction, which you can't tell people about, books so special and rare and yours that advertising your affection feels like betrayal"
"I'm a grenade and at some point I'm going to blow up and I would like to minimize the casualties, okay?"
"You are so busy being YOU that you have no idea how utterly unprecedented you are."
"It's a metaphor, see: You put the killing thing right between your teeth, but you don't give it the power to do its killing."
"Sometimes, you read a book and it fills you with this weird evangelical zeal, and you become convinced that the shattered world will never be put back together unless and until all living humans read the book."
"That’s part of what I like about the book in some ways. It portrays death truthfully. You die in the middle of your life, in the middle of a sentence"