Everything was an adventure, at night, when you were where you shouldn't be, even if it was somwhere you could go perfectly well in daylight, and it was then only ordinary.

it goes something like 'There are a lot of ways to be yourself.

I found that the only way I could control this sorrow was not to think of [it] at all, which was almost as painful as the loss itself.

Those single-track military minds never think to ask their cleaning staff for help in giant lethal marauding creature matters.

...like a grain of sand that gets into an oyster's shell. What if the grain doesn't want to become a pearl? Is it ever asked to climb out quietly and take up its old position as a bit of ocean floor?

...but with the hours I sometimes kept at the coffeehouse I had to have learned to take naps during the day or die, and I had learned to take naps. Up until five months ago "something or other or die" had always seemed like a plain choice in favor of the something or other.

the touch of evil poisons by the idea of it. Reject the idea, and you've rejected the evil