It took courage to let things fall apart so beautifully.

A seven-year-old girl can take only so many walks with her grandfather.

Yes, you need a passport to prove to the world that you exist. The people at passport control, they cannot look at you and see you are a person. No! They have to look at a little photograph of you. Then they believe you exist.

It was morning by the clock but deepest nighttime in his body.

Sourmelina's secret (as Aunt Zo put it): 'Lina was one of those women they named the island after.

For the eternity that Lux Lisbon looked at him, Trip Fontaine looked back, and the love he felt at that moment, truer than all subsequent loves because it never had to survive real life, still plagued him, even now in the desert, with his looks and health wasted. 'You never know what'll set the memory off,' he told us. 'A baby's face. A bell on a cat's collar. Anything.' They didn't exchange a single word. But in the weeks that followed, Trip spent his days wandering the halls, hoping for Lux to appear, the most naked person with clothes on he had ever seen.

You don't understand me. I'm a teenager. I've got problems!