“So many times it seemed like there were chances to stop things before they started. Or even stop them in midstream. But it was even worse when you knew in that very moment that there was still time to save yourself, and yet you couldn't even budge.”

“I can be manipulated only so many times
Before even 'I love you' starts to sound like a lie.”

“She started walking again. "Are you saying you didn't even want to be with her? Not even just a little?"
He stopped. "How could I want to be with her when I want to be with you? I told you that before this whole thing started.”

“Even if all the clocks in the station break down, thought Hugo, time won't stop. Not even if you really want it to.

Like now.”

“The world is still spinning and so are we and so are you. When the spinning stops, that'll be the time to worry. Not before.”

“When she played her music even the night demons stopped their work & it took them some time to remember what it was they were doing & the best of them had no stomach for it for a long time after that.”

“He was learning that power—the great power that shattered lives and twisted the course of nations—was like a fog over a meadow at evening. From any distance, it seemed to have a shape, a substance, a color, an edge, yet as you approached it, it seemed to recede before you. Finally, when common sense said you were at its very center, it still seemed just as far away, only by this time it was on all sides, obscuring any vision of the world beyond it.”

“… because he had been waiting for someone to come back to him, so every time someone knocked on the door, he couldn't stop himself from hoping it might be that person, even though he knew he shouldn't hope.”

“New York Times… Asshole, asshole. You cannot even criticize your own mistake. Invading a country, making up excuses before the world that is not true, then you have the gall to say stop. You better stop your publishing.”

“The seconds tick. They always do. The power of an entire sun cannot stop them even for a moment, and so death comes between the moments, like a thief of light in the dark.”