“I have never met a man like my father. He is so mad, terrible and vehement at the same time. Because of him, I never knew anything other than passion. When I began to meet other people I saw that it wasn’t normal.”

“When you told me the first time that Valentine was your father, I didn't believe it. Not just because I didn't want it to be true, but because you weren't anything like him. I've never thought you're anything like him. But you are. You are.”

“[Nelson, about Harry] "I saw him, eventually," Nelson says, "as a loser, who never found his niche and floated along on Mom's money, which was money her father made. […] But being a loser wasn't the way my father saw himself. He saw himself as a winner, and until I was twelve or so I saw him the same way."”

“it seemed to me that I had never met
another person on earth
as discouraging to my happiness
as my father.
and it appeared that I had
the same effect upon
him.”

“I know you're no worse than most men but I thought you were better. I never saw you as a man. I saw you as my father.”

“I have never met a man so ignorant that I could not learn something from him.”

“I knew he would never leave me, never let me down-because the man had never abandoned anything in his long life. If I hadn’t taken the gold rope of our bond, I knew Adam would have sat on me and hog-tied me with it. I liked that. A lot.”

“I do not like strangers because I do not like people I have never met before. They are hard to understand.”

“I never excelled at one sport or had a very strong passion for anything other than wrestling and bodybuilding.”

“He was pretty. His eyes were kind and young. One had to wonder whether he was fourteen years old, or a thousand, being so smooth and untouched. A little boy peered out of the man's face. He was funny… I was bewildered… a man, responsible for the life and death of thousands, and yet there was no trace on him? One could be frightened of less, and yet so harmlessly innocent? Yes, innocent was the word… I knew I would remember this meeting the rest of my life, because I had never before met an emptyness like this.”