It's like a cockroach working up a plan to defeat the shoe on its way down to crush it.

Self-pity is egotism undiluted, after all—self-centeredness in its purest form.

I thought I knew what loneliness was before he found me, but I had no clue. You don't know what real loneliness is until you've known the opposite.

Dr. Warthrop chopped off my finger with a butcher knife.

He spreads his fingers over my heart, like he’s holding it, like it belongs to him, the hard-fought-for territory he’s won fair and square.

Perhaps that is our doom, our human curse, to never really know one another. We erect edifices in our minds about the flimsy framework of word and deed, mere totems of the true person, who, like the gods to whom the temples were built, remains hidden. We understand our own construct; we know our own theory; we love our own fabrication. Still . . . does the artifice of our affection make our love any less real?

Good God, man, what is that smell?" He eyed with disgust the doctor's filthy cloak. "Life," answered the doctor.