“Love cannot be reduced to a catalogue of reasons why, and a catalogue of reasons cannot be put together into love.”

“for Pop, who sees the starsand Jude, who hears their music”

“But could he endure it, that other men knew her in a way that he, Staines, did not? He did not know.”

“He liked lonely places, because he never really felt alone.”

“We observe that one of the great attributes of discretion is that it can mask ignorance of all the most common and lowly varieties, and Walter Moody was nothing if not excessively discreet.”

“Suffering, he thought later, could rob a man of his empathy, could turn him selfish, could make him depreciate all other sufferers.”

“What do you think my chances might be of finding a soul mate in the group of you? I'll be lucky if I can just find someone who'll be able to stand me for the rest of our lives. What if I've already...”

“There were a group of people before the Ascension known as the Astalsi. They claimed that each person was born with a certain finite amount of ill luck. And so, when an unfortunate event happened, ...”

“Well, good luck, the Vietnam verbal tic...It was as though people couldnt stop themselves from saying it, even when they actually meant to express the opposite wish, like, Die, motherfucker. Usuall...”