“There was something so primal and hungry about the way he stared down at her.. the way their bodies unconsciously strained toward one another as if nothing - not even time, not distance, not even death- could ever keep them apart.”

“There is nothing that cuts you down to size like coming to some strange and marvelous place where no one even stops to notice that you stare about you.”

“No way they could threaten him, not even with Amelie; he'd already given Amelie the finger on the way out of Morganville and he clearly wasn’t worried about her coming after him— or, if so, what would happen when she did.”

“The march, as ever, is toward the future, and he who marches is getting there, even though he march walking backwards. And who knows if that is not the better way!…”

“For the only way one can speak of nothing is to speak of it as though it were something, just as the only way one can speak of God is to speak of him as though he were a man, which to be sure he was, in a sense, for a time, and as the only way one can speak of man, even our anthropologists have realized that, is to speak of him as though he were a termite.”

“He gave her a bright fake smile; so much of life was a putting off of unhappiness for another time. Nothing was ever lost by delay. He had a dim idea that perhaps if one delayed long enough, things were taken out of one's hands altogether by death.”

“He let her get almost all the way there, just staring, before he stumbled towards her. They ended in a rush and then fell to the ground together, arms locked around each other, each holding on as tightly as possible. Niether of them said a word.”

“India will have to hang down her head in shame if even one person is left who is said in any way to be untouchable.”

“It was one thing to be instantly attracted to a woman, and another to like her independence, the way she took no notice of what he thought of her, one way or the other. She was indeed a modern woman—not aggressive, yet not submissive. A self-possessed apartness, a lack of cling…
Yes, that was what held his attention: her reserve. The promise of depths you could not guess merely by seeing her in a swimsuit.”

“Dead bodies didn't resemble unconscious ones; it was as if you could sense that something had fled from them, that some essential spark was now missing.”