"When a woman is interested in you, she'll let you know; if not, there's no aftershave, gift, or line you can spin to make her change her mind."

"Only one-tenth of what you write will make it into your manuscript, but when you knock on that tenth " I rap my knuckles on the table " "you'll hear oaken solidity, not sawdust and glue."

"Coffee's the elixir of life."

"The clock's pendulum catches the firelight, and in the rattle-breathed final moments of Jacob de Zoet, amber shadows in the far corner coagulate into a woman's form. She slips between the bigger, taller onlookers unnoticed and adjusts her headscarf, the better to hide her burn. She places her cool palms on Jacob's fever-glazed face.Jacob sees himself, when he was young, in her narrow eyes. Her lips touch the place between his eyebrows. A well-waxed paper door slides open."

"Nothing has changed, except everything."

"Neither of us had anything to say, or rather we had everything to say, but after all those nights of not saying a word, we suddenly found we had not one dollar of time left between us."

"On bad days you wonder, 'Why not just back off from the war and lead a quiet metalife?"

"Power and moneyLike Pooh Bear and honeyStick fast."

"Prayer may be a placebo for the disease of helplessness, but placebos can make you feel better."

"Loyalty looks simple... but it ain't."

"We have just enough religion to make us hate, but not enough to make us love."

"Taro taught me that people respect spirit, but even cowards don't respect cowards."

"When you write it, don't write it in the manner of a spooky story. Don't try to give an explanation. Just say that I don't know what to make of it, just write it like I tell it, so the reader can make up his own mind."

"Scholars discern motions of history & formulate these motions into rules that govern the rises & falls of civilizations. My belief runs contrary, however. To wit: history admits no rules, only outcomes. What precipitates outcomes? Vicious acts and virtuous acts. What precipitates acts? Belief."

"Oh, once you've been initiated into the Elderly, the world doesn't want you back. Veronica settled herself in a rattan chair and adjusted her hat just so. "We-by whom I mean anyone over sixty-commit two offenses just by existing. One is Lack of Velocity. We drive too slowly, walk too slowly, talk too slowly. The world will do business with dictators, perverts, and drug barons of all stripes, but being slowed down it cannot abide. Our second offence is being Everyman's memento mori. The world can only get comfy in shiny-eyed denial if we are out of sight."

"Autumn is leaving its mellowness behind for its spiky, rotted stage. Don't remember summer even saying goodbye."

"If consumers found fulfillment at any meaningful level, she extemporized, corpocracy would be finished."

"But thought has no eyelids to close or ears to block..."

"I find a certain comfort," confesses Marinus, "in humanity's helplessness."

"Anna would like you, he thinks, looking into her face. Anna would like you."

"You say you're 'depressed' - all i see is resilience. You are allowed to feel messed up and inside out. It doesn't mean you're defective - it just means you're human."

"Rights are susceptible to subversion, as even granite is susceptible to erosion. My fifth Declaration posits how, in a cycle as old as tribalism, ignorance of the Other engenders fear; fear engenders hatred; hatred engenders violence; violence engenders further violence until the only "rights, the only law, are whatever is willed by the most powerful."

"Photos're better than nothing, but things're better than photos 'cause the things themselves were part of what was there."

"Now I seen Mauna Kena from Honokaa b'fore, o'course, but a mountain you're planning on climbin' ain't the same as the one you ain't. It ain't so pretty, nay."

"In the Belgian backwaters, south of Bruges, there lives a reclusive English composer, named Vyvyan Ayrs. You won't have heard of him because you're a musical oaf, but he's one of the greats."

"Our ancestors built temples for their gods. We build department stores."

"The double-crossed, might-have-been history of my country is not the study of what actually took place here: it's the study of historians' studies. . . .Memories are their own descendants masquerading as the ancestors of the present."

"The potatoes were starch grenades. The canned carrots were revolting because that is their nature."

"Women, oh, women! They'll find the baddest meanin' in your words an' hold it up, sayin', Look what you attacked me with!"

"What's the book like?""Well, some of it's twaddle, but mostly it's just piffle. Cheers!"

"The truth of a myth, your Honor, is not its words but its patterns."

"Do," said Louisa finally, "whatever you can't not do."

"Politicians and sports coaches both need to be smart enough to master the game, but dumb enough to think it matters."

"Belief, like fear or love, is a force to be understood as we understand the theory of relativity and principals of uncertainty. Phenomena that determine the course of our lives. Yesterday, my life was headed in one direction. Today, it is headed in another. Yesterday, I believe I would never have done what I did today. These forces that often remake time and space, that can shape and alter who weimagine ourselves to be, begin long before we are born and continue after we perish. Our lives and our choices, like quantum trajectories, are understood moment to moment. That each point of intersection, each encounter, suggest a new potential direction. Proposition, I have fallen in love with Luisa Rey. Is this possible? I just met her and yet, I feel like something important has happened to me."

"A single night is stuffed with minutes, but they leak out, one by one."

"Humans live in a pit of cheating, exploiting, hurting, incarcerating. Every time, the species wastes some part of what it could be. This waste is poisonous."

"This, explained the angel, is hell. The people do not love each other. They only want to feed themselves."

"Why have you given your life to books, TC? Dull, dull, dull! The memoirs are bad enough, but all that ruddy fiction! Hero goes on a journey, stranger comes to town, somebody wants something, they get it or they don't, will is pitted against will. "Admire me, for I am a metaphor."

"If you're in your life, chance. Viewed from the outside, like a book you're reading, it's fate all the way."

"It's a bizarre act of self-mutilation to say that 'I don't get on with science fiction and fantasy, therefore I'm never going to read any'. What a shame. All those great books that you're cutting yourself off from."

"Pretending,' she looked at the garden, 'is not the truth.''But you said two true things, right ? One, you hate this girl. Two, you want her to feel better. If you decide that the wanting truth's more important than the hating truth, just tell her you've forgiven her, even if you haven't. At least she'd feel better. Maybe that'd make you feel better too.'Madame Crommelynck studied her hands, moodily, both sides. 'Sophistry', she pronounced. I'm not sure what 'sophistry' means so I kept shtum."

"As for reading, I wish I had a magic door to a library where I could go in, read for days and days, and come back in the same minute I left. I'm still looking for the door."

"Every relationship has its own language. It takes a long time to evolve and read one another. Just as it's true for people, it's also true on a national or cultural level."