But what are they?” Annie asked.“An omphalos, probably,” said Jacob.“A what, dear?” Melinda asked.“A bellybutton of the world.”“I didn’t know it had one.

– I’m going to be a writer, he reminded Milo.– And you won’t need literature?– I’ll write my own.

By its nature a relationship was not an accomplishment. It was just a connection that happened to exist, for as long as it did exist.

Since he had given up men he had taken up geography. He visited a new sight or a new neighborhood nearly every weekend.

He was in the flow of time now. He was in a story.

There’s always a story that people are telling about themselves, and sometimes you can get them to tell it ever so slightly differently.

It is perhaps necessary for something dear to be lost.”“Why?”“Perhaps it is necessary to the making of a story. A story after all is a way of remembering love.

It’s a question of wanting to know how the story turns out. And one can only know that about one story, ever.

A year ago he had been in America. Two years ago he had been straight. Tonight he was underground, with the remains of the bogey man, lit by the torches of the children who had killed him.

I suppose it does come with a certain responsibility.”“What does?” asked Annie.“The magnificence of my person.”“Gah.

Crisis – the midwife of capitalism. The ‘advisers’ arrive and say, My god, they have no predatory class here. It is an emergency! We must create one immediately. Let us arrange to give everything to a few crooks. Then this country, too, will have a mess of parasites to rule it, to suck the value of the people’s labour.

Like capitalism,” Carl suggested. “‘We’ll give you so much pleasure, you’ll never want to try another socioeconomic system.

Unable to see, they were briefly seized by the characteristic Prague anxiety of never finding the entrance--of arriving at one's goal but remaining blocked from it by a wall or a stone on account of having overlooked an alley or medieval door a few dozen yards back, which has served as the approach so immemorially that no one any longer marked or described it.

It was strange that one couldn’t know in advance which places one was later going to wish to remember.

In Rome the statues, in Paris the paintings, and in Prague the buildings suggest that pleasure can be an education.