“But what are they? Annie asked.An omphalos, probably, said Jacob.A what, dear? Melinda asked.A bellybutton of the world.I didnt know it had one.”

“ Im going to be a writer, he reminded Milo. And you wont need literature? Ill write my own.”

“By its nature a relationship was not an accomplishment. It was just a connection that happened to exist, for as long as it did exist.”

“Since he had given up men he had taken up geography. He visited a new sight or a new neighborhood nearly every weekend.”

“A year ago he had been in America. Two years ago he had been straight. Tonight he was underground, with the remains of the bogey man, lit by the torches of the children who had killed him.”

“I suppose it does come with a certain responsibility.What does? asked Annie.The magnificence of my person.Gah.”

“Paris was all so... Parisian. I was captivated by the wonderful wrongness of it all - the unfamiliar fonts, the brand names in the supermarket, the dimensions of the bricks and paving stones. Child...”

“Oh, well, it might look like a patterned world, laid out in prim design, but to those living there it could never be so simple. They were as alive as she: that old peasant contriving to outwit the ...”

“I knew how severe I had been and how bad things had been. The one who is doing his work and getting satisfaction from it is not the one who poverty bothers.”

“When you are quite well enough to travel, Latimer, I shall take you home with me. The journey will amuse you and do you good, for I shall go through the Tyrol and Austria, and you will see many new...”

“London? Paris? Berlin? Zurich? Maybe Brussels, center of the young union? They all strive to outdo one another culturally, architecturally, politically, fiscally. But Rome, it should be said, has n...”

“Humiliating events have a way of capturing the public's imagination. So it has been since antiquity, when gladiators were pitted against each other and the legions of Spartacus were crucified in en...”

“When thou art at Rome, do as they do at Rome.”