What a blessed if painful thing, this business of being alive.

Already, though, she understood the difference between being a child and being an adult. The difference is when someone says he can keep the bad things away, a child believes him.

It was something... the way a person's life picked up speed, the way a life was like a bullet aimed at one final target, impossible to slow or turn aside, and like the bullet, you were ignorant of what you were going to hit, would never know anything except the rush and the impact.

All the world is made of music. We are all strings on a lyre. We resonate. We sing together.

That was one thing you found out when you were stoned, or wasted, or feverish: that the world was always turning and that only a healthy mind could block out the sickening whirl of it.

It bewildered Ig, the idea that a person could not be interested in music. It was like not being interested in happiness.

Don't ever have children, Tyler, unless you're ready to be afraid everyday for the rest of your life.