“They had parted as boys, and now life presented one of them with a fugitive and the other with a dying man. Both wondered whether this was due to the cards they'd been dealt or to the way they had played them.”

“You got dealt some crappy cards. But you're the one who has to decide how to play them.”

“Life is like a game of cards. The hand that is dealt you is determinism; the way you play it is free will.”

“Plus he was naturally lucky at cards. As Mam had always said, lucky at cards, or lucky at life. One or the other. Not both.”

“Christopher discovered that you dealt with obnoxious masters and most older boys the way you dealt with governesses: you quite politely told them the truth in the way they wanted to hear it, so that they thought they had won and left you in peace.”

“Tell them I've had a wonderful life.”

“She had read a wonderful play about a man who scratched on the wall of his cell and she had felt that was true of life — one scratched on the wall.”

“Life isn't fair, so you have to play the best game you can with the cards you're dealt.”

“Something had been given back to him. And because [she] had been a part of it, there was something between them now. A bond of loss, if loss could bind.”

“Other children had fathers and mothers and honored them, and they prospered and lived to a ripe old age; but he was often bitter towards his father and mother and dishonored them in his heart. His mother had cuckolded his father, and his father had betrayed his mother, and both of them had betrayed the boy. The only consolation was that he had a Father in heaven. And yet—it would have been better to have a father on earth.”