You're nice,' Cushie told him, squeezing his hand. 'And you're my oldest friend.' But they both must have known that you can know someone all your life and never quite be friends.

My brain is sending poison to my heart.

Nothing moves at the Hotel New Hampshire! We're screwed down here-for life!

… and so he tried to accept the ache in his heart as what Dr. Larch would call the common symptoms of normal life.

Know the story before you fall in love with your first sentence. If you don’t know the story before you begin the story, what kind of a storyteller are you? Just an ordinary kind, just a mediocre kind – making it up as you go along, like a common liar.

Being reviewed is being condescended to by your inferiors.

...every study of the gods, of everyone's gods, is a revelation of vengeance towards the innocent.