“Don't you understand that wanting does not belong here, because that is what wounds, and there is never an end to it.”

“I want not to panic. I want to be comfortable in my body and my life. I don't want to keep thinking that I don't belong here, that I have ended up on the wrong planet, completely alienated.”

“You don't want another Enron? Here's the law: If you have a company, and it can't explain, in one sentence… what it does… it's illegal!”

“What a tragic realm this is, he reflected. Those down here are prisoners, and the ultimate tragedy is that they don't know it; they think they are free because they have never been free, and do not understand what it means.”

“These tests are designed to exclude others from the discourse - just as the word discourse is itself designed to do. These words are intended to say to people: this is a group thing. If you don't understand what we're talking about, you're not a member of the group. So, if you call this place the Canny Man's it shows that you belong, that you know what's what in Edinburgh. And that, you know, is what everybody wants, underneath. We want to belong.”

“Stay because you want to be here. Stay because we would miss you. And stay because you can belong in more than one place, and one of your places is with us.”

“There's something sad about people going to bed. You can see they don't give a damn whether they're getting what they want out of life or not, you can see they don't even try to understand what we're here for. They just don't care.”

“Does he write to you? Never a line. Does he send you a message? Never a word. It is because he loves you, poor fool, and is trying to forget you, since you are not free to listen to him or to belong to him.”

“One can not understand language because language cannot understand itself; does not want to understand”

“If you don't know what you want," the doorman said, "you end up with a lot you don't.”