Everyone, at some point in their lives, wakes up in the middle of the night with the feeling that they are all alone in the world, and that nobody loves them now and that nobody will ever love them, and that they will never have a decent night's sleep again and will spend their lives wandering blearily around a loveless landscape, hoping desperately that their circumstances will improve, but suspecting, in their heart of hearts, that they will remain unloved forever. The best thing to do in these circumstances is to wake somebody else up, so that they can feel this way, too.

What you don't read is often as important as what you do read.

To stutter through it with you or even stop stuttering and say nothing, was so lucky and soft, better talk than mile-a-minute with anyone. After a few minutes we’d stop rattling, we’d adjust, we’d settle in, and the conversation would speed into the night.

It doesn't take courage to kill someone,' Klaus said. 'It takes a severe lack of moral stamina.

The rinsed foam swirled into one drain that always clogged come October when the maples dropped Canadian propaganda over everything.

It is my fate that some of my questions will never be answered.

Wherever it's good, whatever strange, faraway land, let's go there, let's stay in that place alone.