“I see history as really cyclical in terms of the intense idealism and the desire to create a better life outside of societal norms. In America, possibly because of whatever the American drea...”

“But my best friend from college was silent for a long time. She, of all of my friends, had seen the parade of sad wrecks through my life, date after bad date after bad boyfriend. She was the...”

“I see history as really cyclical in terms of the intense idealism, and the desire to create a better life outside of societal norms.”

“It is a defect of God's humor that he directs our hearts everywhere but to those who have a right to them.”

“Comparing what we're looking for misses the point. It's wanting to know that makes us matter. Otherwise we're going out the way we came in. That's why you can't believe in the afterlife, Val...”

“If knowledge isn't self-knowledge it isn't doing much, mate. Is the universe expanding? Is it contracting? Is it standing on one leg and singing 'When Father Painted the Parlour'? Leave me o...”

“What are a friend's books for if not to be borrowed?”

“...she says, Even when you think you can't bear it, you can bear it. He doesn't say anything. Sometimes you have to let time carry you past your troubles, she says. Believe me. I have been w...”

“When you stir your rice pudding, Septimus, the spoonful of jam spreads itself round making red trails like the picture of a meteor in my astronomical atlas. But if you stir backwards, the ja...”