Amsterdam is like the rings of a tree: It gets older as you get closer to the center.

The dead are visible only in the terrible lidless eye of memory.

That’s part of what I like about the book in some ways. It portrays death truthfully. You die in the middle of your life, in the middle of a sentence

I don't really want to be the costar of anyone's life.

I was blind and heart broken and didn't want to do anything and Gus burst into my room and shouted, "I have wonderful news!" And I was like, "I don't really want to hear wonderful news right now," and Gus said, "This is wonderful news you want to hear," and I asked him, "Fine, what is it?" and he said, "You are going to live a good and long life filled with great and terrible moments that you cannot even imagine yet!

I knew that time would now pass for me differently than it would for him - that I, like everyone in that room, would go on accumulating loves and losses while he would not. And for me, that was the final and truly unbearable tragedy: Like all the innumerable dead, he'd once and for all been demoted from haunted to haunter.

I realize that they giggle and I actually laugh, that they show their cleavage and I have none to show, but just so you know, I am also a girl. I'm one of the three wise MEN. And it's gay to think that James Bond is hot.