“It took many years of vomiting up all the filth I’d been taught about myself, and half-believed, before I was able to walk on the earth as though I had a right to be here.”

“I’ve been wandering around all night—I couldn’t sleep—and I kept finding myself walking here. To you.”

“Here. (Zarek)
What is it? (Astrid)
Arsenic and vomit. (Zarek)
Really? And yet you managed to hack that up so quietly. Who knew? Thanks. I’ve never had vomit before. I’m sure it’s extra special. (Astrid)”

“You and I, it's as though we have been taught to kiss in heaven and sent down to earth together, to see if we know what we were taught.”

“If I had been asked this about a year/year-and-a-half ago, I would have said "You can't trust everybody!" But now that I've been in the music industry, and famous, and on YouTube and stuff: "You can't trust everybody, at all."”

“I had been taught that while the Sun indeed affects the upper and outer atmosphere of the Earth, purported connections with the troposphere and weather and climate were uniformly wacky and to be distrusted. I still believe that to some extent, for there is a hypnotism about cycles that seems to attract people. It draws all kinds of creatures out of the woodwork. The claims that were made for associations between weather events and the Sun I thought were pretty preposterous. One of those that turned up was this notion that Gene told me about. About the work of Walter Maunder 100 years before, when he had thought that there was a prolonged period of time in the 1600s when the Sun wasn’t so active.”

“That’s almost like the daft things you believe when you’re really little, like I use to believe I could fly. I believed it for years, but it had to be kept secret. I knew if I ever told anyone or showed it off to anyone, I’d lose the power. And if I doubted it, and tried it out just to see, I’d lose the power — so I didn’t. I believed in it. I knew I would be able to fly when there really was a need. Which, fortunately for me, there never was.”

“All I desired was to walk upon such an earth that had no maps.”

“Barbarian that I am, I had eaten all of it. It had tasted quite nice too. Still, I took note of this fact and resigned myself to throw away half of a perfectly good cheese if it was set in front of me. Such is the price of civilization.”

“I saw him open his mouth wide… as though he had wanted to swallow all the air, all the earth, all the men before him.”