“Punk had picked the locks, sluiced out into the grid.”

“Some people think the real them is whoever they are when they're not around other people.”

“It's like Charlie's dreamed everything he lived through here.”

“William loathed his family,' Mercer said. 'With cause.”

“As ever in the family Goodman, someone would have to swallow feelings here, and it was easier that it be Mercer.”

“Incidental, all of it, of course, but this was what this city bestowed that novels couldn't: not what you needed in order to live, but what made the living worth doing in the first place.”

“It's like Charlie's dreamed everything he lived through here.”

“William loathed his family,' Mercer said. 'With cause.”

“As ever in the family Goodman, someone would have to swallow feelings here, and it was easier that it be Mercer.”

“A few blossoms float into the room. They drop like frayed yellow ribbons on the gray carpet.”

“Gula and Cali lie on their sides, their tiny adder-mouths showing the pink of their palates, their bodies throbbing with lustful and obscene dreams. The sky releases its burden of sun and color. Ey...”

“... there was no need for him to hasten towards the attainment of a happiness already captured and held in a safe place, which would not escape his grasp again.”

“This life is yours. Take the power to choose what you want to do and do it well. Take the power to love what you want in life and love it honestly. Take the power to walk in the forest and be a par...”

“It would seem from this fact, that man is naturally a wild animal, and that when taken from the woods, he is never happy in his natural state, 'till he returns to them again.”

“It was a though wed been living for a year in a dense grove of old trees, a cluster of firs, each with its own rhythm and character, from whom our bodies had drawn not just shelter but perhaps even...”