You never stop being a parent, Adam, no matter how old or wise your child becomes you'll see.

Stupid people do stupid things, but people who are smart enough can do something really stupid.

To fire a bullet into the heart or brains of one's fellow man even a fellow man striving to do the same to you creates what might be called an unassimilable memory: a memory that floats on daily life the way an oil stain floats on rainwater. Stir the rain barrel, scatter the oil into countless drops, disperse it all you like, but it will not mix; and eventually the slick comes back, as loathsomely intact as it ever was.

The attacking piece displaces its victim. The vanquished piece leaves the plane of the board entirely. But it does not, in a higher sense, cease to exist.

It was the kind of experience, Molly said, that would grow calluses on an angel's ass.

One doesn't have to understand in order to look. One has to look, in order to understand.

It was possible at last to hear the silence to appreciate that there was a silence, deep and potent, out there beyond the pretension of the light.