“If you live in the dark a long time and the sun comes out, you do not cross into it whistling. There's an initial uprush of relief at first, then-for me, anyway- a profound dislocation. My old assumptions about how the world works are buried, yet my new ones aren't yet operational.There's been a death of sorts, but without a few days in hell, no resurrection is possible.”

“What you do is what matters, not what you think or say or plan.”

“Every hero is the villain of his own story.”

“Sometimes people sneak up on you and suddenly you don’t know how you ever lived without them.”

“Wisdom tends to grow in proportion to one's awareness of one's ignorance.”

“Two wrongs don't make a right, but don't three lefts make a right? Two wrongs don't make a right, but don't two negatives make a positive?”

“Here's a basic difference between Morelli and me. My first thought was always of cake. His first thought was always of sex. Don't get me wrong. I like sex . . . a lot. But it's never going to replace cake.”

“There are several ways to react to being lost. One is to panic: this was usually Valentina's first impulse. Another is to abandon yourself to lostness, to allow the fact that you've misplaced yourself to change the way you experience the world.”