“They could read him, they could study him, they could pick him apart, but they couldn't laugh or be sad with him….”

“Somewhere in him, a shadow turned mournfully over. You had to run with a night like this so the sadness could not hurt”

“And that, apart from a flurry of sensational newspaper reports which exposed him as a fraud, then trumpeted him as the real thing so that they could have another round of exposing him as a fraud again and then trumpeting him as the real thing again, until they got bored and found a nice juicy snooker player to harass instead, was that.”

“He was making a brave attempt, but Jason could see the sadness lingering in his eyes. Something had happened to him… something to do with Calypso.”

“He did not, and could not, understand the meaning of words apart from their context. Every word and action of his was the manifestation of an activity unknown to him, which was his life.”

“You fell in love with someone because of the tilt of his smile, or because he could make you laugh, or in this case, because he made you believe that you were the only one who could save him.”

“He thought how sad it was to be an Animal who had never had a bunch of violets picked for him.”

“In a way, it made him sad. He couldn't help but think that a hundred times zero was still nothing.”

“You know the story of the famous seer Phineus whom the Argonauts consulted when they stopped in Salmydessos in Thrace on their way to Colchis to get the golden fleece. He was blind, but not entirely blind - he could see just enough to see that he could not see. And the little flickering spots of light that forced themselves on him were wind-harpies trying to steal from him his prophetic power. So he would beg everyone to make him blind, to rid him of the harpies. But people laughed at him because, so far as they could tell, he was as blind as any man needed to be. Only Hercules understood, because his spirit extended into the divine shadows. Only Hercules had the courage to make the blind Phineus blind.”

“If I couldn't sleep, I could read.”