"She calls herself Tallulah, but I know who she really is. A name can’t begin to encompass the sum of all her parts. But that’s the magic of names, isn’t it? That the complex, contradictory individuals we are can be called up complete and whole in another mind through the simple sorcery of a name."

"It’s the questions we ask, the journey we take to get to where we are going that’s more important than the actual answer. It’s good to have mysteries. It reminds us that there’s more to the world than just making do and having a bit of fun."

"Everybody makes the same mistake. Fortune-telling doesn’t reveal the future; it mirrors the present. It resonates against what your subconscious already knows and hauls it up out of the darkness so that you can get a good look at it."

"Time does more than erode a riverbank or wear mountains down into tired hills. It takes the edge from our memories as well, overlaying everything with a soft focus so that it all blurs together. What really happened gets all jumbled up with the hopes and dreams we once had and what we wish had really happened."

"Those who live forever, who have no stake in the dance of death’s inevitable approach, can never understand the sanctity of life."

"Look, I’m sorry if I don’t measure up to how people want me to be, but this is just the way I am."

"It was the old story, he realized. Everything, everybody wanted to lay claim to a piece of your soul. And if they couldn’t have it, they made you pay for it in guilt."

"Every big city like this is really two worlds. You could say it’s divided up between the haves and the have-nots, but it’s not that simple. It’s more like some people are citizens of the day and others of the night. Someone like me belongs to the night. Not because I’m bad, but because I’m invisible. People don’t know I exist."

"I know that feeling all too well, but I broke the only pair of rose-colored glasses I had the chance to own a long time ago."

"I find that a lot of people have this thing about making crap romantic, the way they like to blur outlaws and heroes, the good with the bad."

"She’s always so ready to believe anything that anyone tells her, so long as it’s magical. Well, I believe in magic, too, but it’s the magic that can turn a caterpillar into a butterfly, the natural wonder and beauty of the world that’s all around me. I can’t believe in some dreamland being real."

"Do you know what fear stands for? Fuck Everything And Run."

"Creeps don’t need reasons for what they do; that’s why they’re creeps."

"They’d met three years ago at a record launch party when Hilary had made a pass at her. Once they got past the fact that Zoe preferred men and wasn’t planning on changing that preference, they discovered that they had far too much in common not to be good friends."

"It’s so much easier for most people to relate to a TV set than it is to another person. They get all this data fed into them, but they don’t know what to do with it anymore. When they talk to other people, it’s all surface. How ya doing, what about the weather. The only opinions they have are those that they’ve gotten from people on the TV. They think they’re informed, but all they’re doing is repeating the views of talk show hosts and news commentators."

"“Who is he?” she asked. “Or maybe I should be asking what is he?” “I’ve always thought of him as a kind of anima, Jilly said. “A loose bit of myth that got left behind when all the others went on to wherever it is that myths go when we don’t believe in them anymore.”"

"“There’s stories and then there’s stories,” he said, interrupting her. “The ones with any worth change your life forever, perhaps only in a small way, but once you’ve heard them, they are forever a part of you. You nurture them and pass them on, and the giving only makes you feel better. “The others are just words on a page.”"

"That's the thing with magic. You've got to know it's still here, all around us, or it just stays invisible for you."

"In one form or another, it was one of the first implements created by ancient people to give voice to the mysteries that words cannot encompass, but that they had a need to express; only the drum was older."

"But music has its own enchantment and the first few notes of an old tune are all that it requires to transform any site into a place of magic, even if that location is no more than a windowless office cubicle in the old Firehall’s basement."

"Jilly was one of those who preferred to know what was going on and try to do something about it, rather than pretend it wasn’t happening and hoping that, by ignoring what was wrong, it would just go away. Truth was, Jilly had long ago learned, trouble never went away. It just got worse—unless you fixed it."

"“I’d rather stare at a brick wall, any time, than watch that damn TV in the lounge,” he’d told Jilly more than once. “That’s when things started to go wrong—with the invention of television. Wasn’t till then that we found out there was so much wrong in the world.”"

"The road leading to a goal does not separate you from the destination; it is essentially a part of it."

"The best kinds of practical jokes are those that backfire on whoever’s playing the trick."

"“Don’t you ever watch TV?” Jilly shook her head. “What? And let the aliens monitor my brain waves?”"

"Blasting out of the stores speakers was the new Beastie Boys album. It sounded like a cross between heavy metal and bad rap and was about as appealing as being hit by a car. You couldn’t deny its energy, though."

"“He can be so sweet on one page, and then on the next he’s taking you on a tour through an abattoir.” “Just like life,” Bramley said."

"I was going through the motions of life, instead of really living, and there’s no excuse for that. It’s not something I’ll let happen to me again."

"See, when you get down to the basics of it, everything’s just molecules vibrating. Which is what music is, what sound is—vibrations in the air. So we’re all part of that music and the worthier it is, the more voices we can add to it, the better off we all are."

"Humanity’s whole unfortunate history is one long account of how we attack what we don’t understand, what’s strange to us."

"Jilly always says the family we choose for ourselves is more important than the one we were born into; that people have to earn our respect and trust, not have it handed to them simply because of genetics."

"It’s not that I don’t have convictions, or that I won’t defend them. I save my battles for things that have meaning instead of tilting at every mild irritation that comes my way. You can fritter away your whole life with those kinds of windmills."

"The problem with children is that you have to put up with their parents."

"I'm not Chinese. I thrive in interesting times."

"If you're not ready to die, then how can you live?"

"Finality is death. Perfection is finality. Nothing is perfect. There are lumps in it."

"Curiosity will conquer fear even more than bravery will."

"The duty of a lyrical poet is not to express or explain, it is to intensify life."

"Speech and prose are not the same thing. They have different wave-lengths, for speech moves at the speed of light, where prose moves at the speed of the alphabet, and must be consecutive and grammatical and word-perfect. Prose cannot gesticulate. Speech can sometimes do nothing else."

"I would think Until I found Something I can never find; – Something Lying On the ground, In the bottom Of my mind."

"If I asked her master he'd give me a cask a day; But she, with the beer at hand, not a gill would arrange! May she marry a ghost and bear him a kitten, and may The High King of Glory permit her to get the mange."

"Because our lives are cowardly and sly, Because we do not dare to take or give, Because we scowl and pass each other by, We do not live; we do not dare to live."

"Quand vous serez bien vieille, au soir, à la chandelle, Assise auprès du feu, dévidant et filant, Direz, chantant mes vers, en vous émerveillant: "Ronsard me célébrait du temps que j'étais belle.""

"Mignonne, allons voir si la rose Qui ce matin avoit desclose Sa robe de pourpre au Soleil, A point perdu ceste vesprée Les plis de sa robe pourprée. Et son teint au vostre pareil."

"Ny trop haut, ny trop bas, c’est le souverain style; Tel fut celuy d’Homère, et celuy de Virgile."

"Je voudrais être le ruban qui serre ta belle poitrine; Je voudrais être le carcan qui orne ta gorge ivoirine."

"Cueillez dès aujourd'hui les roses de la vie."

"Tandis que vostre âge fleuronne En sa plus verte nouveauté, Cueillez, cueillez vostre jeunesse: Comme à ceste fleur la vieillesse Fera ternir vostre beauté."