“I could only stare, any sense that maybe I understood him evaporating as it always did. I'd glimpse something underneath, and he'd snatched it away so fast it left bruises that called me a fool for hoping for more.”

“I can smell you, Ms. Lane," he said, even more softly. "The only blood on you is from your veins, not your womb."
My head whipped to the left and I stared at him. Ok, that was one of the more disturbing things he'd ever said to me.”

“He was waiting for me to say something. He was staring at me. This, I think, is the first time I dared myself to stare back at him. Usually, I'd cast a glance and then look away—look away because I didn't want to swim in the lovely, clear pool of his eyes unless I'd been invited to—and I never waited long enough to know whether I was even wanted there; look away because I was too scared to stare anyone back; look away because I didn't want to give anything away; look away because I couldn't acknowledge how much he mattered. Look away because that steely gaze of his always reminded me of how tall he stood and how far below him ranked.”

“I'd always thought that I understood this, but lately I realize that what I call "understanding" is basically just fantasizing.”

“The last time I'd seen the Minotaur, he'd been wearing nothing but his tighty whities. I don't know why. Maybe he'd been shaken out of bed to chase me.”

“I talked to Paul McCartney over the years ranging from 1967 to 2004. … At the landmine show he did "God Only Knows" with me and I did "Let It Be" with him. And then I called him about four months ago asking him if he could come out and do — sing a song called "A Friend Like You," which I wrote for him, me and my collaborator wrote for him. And he said he'd love to come out. And he came to the studio and that was one of the bigger thrills of my life to tell you the truth, to produce Paul McCartney. And that was a thrill for me. That was a thrill.”

“You see something you like?" I asked, echoing something I'd said to him ling ago, when he'd caught me in a compromising position at school.
"Lots," he said.
-Rose (Roza) to Dimitri”

“I love the life you've always made so sweet for me and I'd regret it if I had to die.'
'Do you mean to say that if I left you---'
'I'd die, yes.'
'Then you love me?”

“To be loved because of one's merit, because one deserves it, always leaves doubt; maybe I did not please the person whom I want to love me, maybe this, or that - there is always a fear that love could disappear.”

“Of course I constantly despair at my own incapacity, at the impossibility of ever accomplishing anything, of painting a valid, true picture or even knowing what such a thing ought to look like. But then I always have the hope that, if I persevere, it might one day happen. And this hope is nurtured every time something appears, a scattered, partial, initial hint of something which reminds me of what I long for, or which conveys a hint of it – although often enough I have been fooled by a momentary glimpse that then vanishes, leaving behind only the usual thing.”