"That’s how stories happen — with a turning point, an unexpected twist. There’s only one kind of happiness, but misfortune comes in all shapes and sizes. It’s like Tolstoy said. Happiness is an allegory, unhappiness a story."

“Mediocrity is like a spot on your shirt, it never comes off.”

“The world would be a pretty dull place if it were made up only of the first-rate, right?”

“But I didn't understand then. That I could hurt somebody so badly she would never recover. That a person can, just by living, damage another human being beyond repair.”

“Many are the women who can take their clothes off seductively, but women who can charm as they dress?”

“The elevator continued its impossibly slow ascent. Or at least I imagined it was ascent. There was no telling for sure: it was so slow that all sense of direction simply vanished. It could have been going down for all I knew, or maybe it wasn’t moving at all. But let’s just assume it was going up. Merely a guess. Maybe I’d gong up twelve stories, then down three. Maybe I’d circled the globe. How would I know?”

“If you're in pitch blackness, all you can do is sit tight until your eyes get used to the dark.”