“When my father wrote about fate, I think he was writing about the reality that is, when there are so many other realities that could have been.”

“Sometimes there are things we don't understand even about ourselves. Sometimes we run out of the time to keep trying to unravel them, and we have to sit back and content ourselves with a shrug. But...”

“We are inscrutable even to ourselves, I suppose.”

“There's an intimacy in listening to somebody's lies, I've always thought--you learn more about someone from the things they wish were true than from the things that actually are.”

“My father had a healthy disregard for social conventions: he once let me paint the house windows in rainbows with my watercolor set, to my mother's horror, and he'd clap for trees that he thought w...”

“But I find something compelling in the game's choreography, the way one move implies the next. The kings are an apt metaphor for human beings: utterly constrained by the rules of the game, defensel...”

“I heard Tash say: Nomi, youre sad man. Get a grip. Walk away. What have I taught you? And I thought: You taught me that some people can leave and some cant and those who can will always be infinite...”

“She resented a universe that forced her to fabricate cover stories for its more inexplicable vagaries.”

“Respect doesn't come without a little resentment.”

“How little our careers express what lies in us, and yet how much time they take up. It's sad, really.”

“Tell the truth through whichever veil comes to hand but tell it. Resign yourself to the lifelong sadness that comes from never being satisfied.”

“What a sad story, I thought for so long. Not that I now think it was happy. But I think it is true, and thus the question of whether it is sad or happy has no meaning whatever.”