"Every apostle or disciple," Mrs. Clarke says, "as much as their running to follow they're savior-they're running just as hard to escape something else."

"In the big factory of perfecting human souls, the Earth was a kind of tumbler. The same as the kind people use to polish rocks. All souls come here to rub the sharp edges off each other. All of us, we're meant to be worn smooth by conflict and pain of every kind. To be polished. There was nothing bad about this. This wasn't suffering. It was erosion. It was just another, a basic, an important step in the refining process."

"The earth, he'd say, is just a big machine. A big processing plant. A factory. That's your big answer. The big truth. Think of a rock polisher, one of those drums, goes round and round, rolls twenty-four/seven, full of water and rocks and gravel. Grinding it all up. Round and round. Polishing those ugly rocks into gemstones. That's the earth. Why it goes round. We're the rocks. And what happens to us--the drama and pain and joy and war and sickness and victory and abuse--why, that's just the water and sand to erode us. Grind us down. To polish us up, nice and bright."

"You are permanent, but this life is not," Mr. Whittier would say. "You don't expect to visit an amusement park, then stay forever."

"A journalist has a right... ...and a duty, to destroy the golden calves he helps create."

"Stink for privacy, the new way to protect personal space. Intimidation by odor."

"What you have to love about drinking is, every swallow is an irrevocable decision. You charging ahead, in control if the game. It’s the same with pills, sedatives and painkillers, every swallow us a first definite step down some road."

"[greeting his final victim at his taxidermy shop in Canada] I've come to collect a head."

"Come on! Let us sing for Mischa! [starts singing "Ein Männlein Stumm und Still" as he is walking with the horse, making every step choke his victim]"

"[as he is carving an 'M' symbol into his victim's chest] "M" For Mischa!"

"The butcher was like butter"

"Rudeness is epidemic."

""I know you can imitate people just as Lady Eleanor could. Once you imitated your manservant to his face, and he wasn't sure whether he was the servant or you were. You make up your own fairy tales and you drop things and trip over things. I know you once broke a whole set of dishes.""I slipped on ice!""Ice chips you spilled before you tripped on them." He laughed. (pp. 13-14)"

"That fool of a fairy Lucinda did not intend to lay a curse on me. She meant to bestow a gift. (p. 3)"

"Dear Ella,Impatience is not usually my weakness. But your letters torment me. They make me long to saddle my horse and ride to Frell, where I would make you explain yourself. They are playful, interesting, thoughtful, and (occasionally) serious. I'm overjoyed to receive them, yet they bring misery. You say little of your daily life; I have no idea how you occupy yourself. I don't mind; I enjoy guessing at the mystery. But what I really long to know you do not tell either: what you feel, although I've given you hints by the score of my regard.You like me. You wouldn't waste time or paper on a being you didn't like. But I think I've loved you since we met at your mother's funeral. I want to be with you forever and beyond, but you write that you are too young to marry or too old or too short or too hungry — until I crumple your letters up in despair, only to smooth them out again for a twelfth reading, hunting for hidden meanings.Father asks frequently in his letters whether I fancy any Ayorthian young lady or any in our acquaintance at home. I say no. I suppose I'm confessing another fault: pride. I don't want him to know that I love if my affections are not returned.You would charm him, and Mother too. They would be yours completely. As I am.What a beautiful bride you'll be, whomever you marry at whatever age. And what a queen if I am the man! Who has your grace? Your expression? Your voice? I could extol your virtues endlessly, but I want you to finish reading and answer me quickly.Today I cannot write of Ayortha or my doings or anything. I can only post this and wait.Love (it is such a relief to pen the word!), love, love—Char"

"Has she gone mad, to speak such falsehood?"

"Things change, people change, but that doesn't mean you should forget the past."

""I don't suppose your eyes ever pop out," I said."I don't think so." Hattie smiled complacently. "They're too small to pop." (p. 21)"

""What a clever daughter I have." Mum Olga beamed at Hattie."As clever as she is beautiful," I said."

"He was like a song I'd heard once in fragments but had been singing in my mind ever since."

"Everything around me seemed to grow so quiet, as if he were the wind that blew and I were just a cloud carries upon it."

"Being sent out into the world isn't necessarily the same as leaving your home behind you."

"I felt as the waves of the ocean must feel when clouds have blocked the warmth of the sun."

"I felt as a simple smelt must feel when a silver salmon glides by."

"If you have experienced an evening more exciting than any in life, you're sad to see it end, and yet you still feel grateful that it happened."

"Dreams can be such dangerous things; they smolder on like a fire does, and sometimes consume us completely."

"Occasionally in life we come upon things we can't understand because we have never seen anything similar."

"I never seek to defeat the man I'm fighting, I seek to defeat his confidence. A mind troubled by doubt cannot focus on the course to victory. Two men are equals -true equals- only when they both have equal confidence."

"We lead our lives like water flowing down a hill, going more or less in one direction until we splash into something that forces us to find a new course."

"We don't become geisha because we want our lives to be happy; we become geisha because we have no choice."

"Water never waits. It changes shape and flows around things, and finds the secret paths no one else has thought about."

"Some people have difficulty telling the difference between something great and something they’ve simply heard of."

"Now I understood the thing I´d overlooked;the point wasn´t to become a geisha but to be one. To become a geisha . . . well, that was hardly a purpose in life. But to be a geisha . . . I could see it now as a stepping-stone to something else."

"A winter scene, though it may be covered over one day, with even trees dressed in shawls of snow, will be unrecognizable the following spring."

"I don't think any of us can speak frankly about pain until we are no longer enduring it."

"I felt as a bird must feel when it has flown across the ocean and comes upon a creature that knows its nest."

"If you'd asked me why I wanted these things, I would have answered, why does a ripe persimmon taste delicious? Why does wood smell smoky when it burns?"

"A tree may look as beautiful as ever, but when you notice insects infesting it, and the tips of the branches that are brown from disease even the trunk seems to lose some of its magnificence."

"(Of Hatsumomo) She was like a fabric taken from its warm closet and hung out of doors where the harsh weather will gradually consume it."

"Camerlengo Carlo Ventresca"

"Robert Langdon"

"Leonardo Vetra"

"Vittoria Vetra"

"Commander Olivetti"

"Captain Rocher"