"He could have killed me for the blunder— which really wasn’t my fault— but I was lucky , and he gave me another chance. The two officers who questioned him were also incredibly lucky for not having had any idea who it was they’d been questioning."

"What did a happy ending even mean in real life, anyway? In stories you simply said, 'They lived happily ever after,' and that was it. But in real life people had to keep on living, day after day, year after year."

"In the last photograph of her, the bullet wound looked like a cheerful summer rose arranged just above her left ear. A few petals had fallen on her kaffan, the white shroud she was wrapped in before she was laid to rest."

"You think maybe if you just work harder and faster, you can hold off the chaos, but then one day you’re changing a patio light bulb with a five-year life span and you realize how you’ll only be changing this light maybe ten more times before you’ll be dead."

"Averages might mean something to bureaucrats and engineers, but the sea had no struck with statistics: it was a succession of unpredictable circumstances and extremes."

"In eighty-six years, child, I've learned the world is a far more mysterious place than most people realize and that every moment of life is woven through with meaning."

"What saddens me most is that some poor woman out there has to be Garth's wife. And his three children -- oh, his poor three children. What a despicable human being this guy is."