“Because I dont care what anyone says or how often or winningly they say it: no one will ever, ever be able to persuade me that life is some awesome, rewarding treat. Because, heres the truth: life ...”

“How much did she remember? I wondered, afire with humiliation yet unable to tear my eyes from her. It wasnt the kind of thing you could ask but still I wanted to know. Did she have nightmares too? ...”

“Putting your time in at the office; dutifully spawning your two point five; smiling politely at your retirement party; then chewing on your bedsheet and choking on your canned peaches at the nursin...”

“Whenever you see flies or insects in a still lifea wilted petal, a black spot on the applethe painter is giving you a secret message. Hes telling you that living things dont lastits all temporary. ...”

“What if one happens to be possessed of a heart that cant be trusted? What if the heart, for its own unfathomable reasons, leads one willfully and in a cloud of unspeakable radiance away from health...”

“And in the midst of our dying, as we rise from the organic and sink back ignominiously into the organic, it is a glory and a privilege to love what Death doesnt touch. For if disaster and oblivion ...”

“But, if I dare say it, it wasn't until I had helped kill a man that I realized how elusive and complex an act a murder can actually be, and not necessarily attributable to one dramatic motive.”

“Richard Papen: As it happened, I knew Gartrell. He was a bad painter and a vicious gossip, with a vocabulary composed almost entirely of obscenities, gutteral verbs, and the world "postmodernist.”

“Though Julian could be marvelously kind in difficult circumstances of all sorts, I sometimes got the feeling that he was less pleased by kindness itself than by the elegance of the gesture.”

“And once you've been to this Center, this Truth, you'll know your way everywhere. You are never lost again.”

“The Queen's Pride was his ship, and he loved her. (That was the way his sentences always went: It is raining today and I love you. My cold is better and I love you. Say hello to Horse and I love yo...”

“What Joab did not and could not know was that it was ego, and the ego of a king is just like the ego of anyone else. It is a social infection, entering each person as a psychological virus that is ...”

“Bah! You want to hear the vilest thing a mans done and you want him to be a hero at the same time!”

“There comes a hush between darkness and day.Like expectation of a caress.A murmur of silence. Tree crests peeked down at Paulette through slowly lifting fog. Bark felt around for its texture again....”

“Underneath the groundyou can't hear a soundnot even the sweet falling rainyou might forget about tomorrowforget about the swallowsbut they won't forget youthey won't forget you”