I rose to my knees, mouth dry and heart pounding, and paused to finger a rip in my beautiful Dacron bowling shirt. I pushed my fingertip through the hole and wiggled it at myself. Hello, Dexter, where are you going? Hello, Mr. Finger. I don't know, but I'm almost there. I hear my friends calling.

It's always me, isn't it? I'm not really a very nice person, but for some reason it's always me that they come to with their problems.

Dying makes everyone weaker, subject to painful insight, and not always insight into any kind of special truth - it's just the approaching end that makes people want to believe they are seeing something in the line of a great revelation.

The whole point of wearing a disguise was to be seen wearing her.

What do you want a clock for?” “To find out what time it is,” I said. “I think that’s the usual purpose.

A reasonable being might think that he and I could find some common ground; have a cup of coffee and compare our Passengers, exchange trade talk and chitchat about dismemberment techniques. But no: Doakes wanted me dead. And I found it difficult to share his point of view.

It revealed a cruelty that really made one wonder if the universe was such a good idea after all.