As the tide washed in, the Dutch Tulip Man faced the Ocean: "Conjoiner rejoinder poisoner concealer revelator. Look at it, rising up and rising down, taking everything with it." "What’s that?" Anna asked. "Water," the Dutchman said. "Well, and time.

Peter Van Houten was the only person I’d ever come across who seemed to (a) understand what it’s like to be dying, and (b) not have died.

If you act out of a paranoid fear of something happening, you will always make that thing happen.

But it was only hot outside, and generally I only walked outside between one air-conditioned place to another.

...It was nice to spend time with someone so interesting.

I'm starting to realize that people lack good mirrors. It's so hard for anyone to show us how we look, & so hard for us to show anyone how we feel.

We live in a universe devoted to the creation, and eradication, of awareness. Augustus Waters did not die after a lengthy battle with cancer. He died after a lengthy battle with human consciousness, a victim - as you will be - of the universe's need to make and unmake all that is possible.