“It is so easy for humans to be cruel, and they leap to it. They love to do it. It is an exercise of all their laughable powers.”

“Children learn bullying behavior from adults, but no one talks about this transfer of destructive behavior.”

“The world is full of fools eagerly waiting to hear what they long to be told.”

“The other mammoths were as protective of the dying as they were of newborns, and they gathered around tying to make the fallen one get up. When all was over, they buried the dead ancestor under piles of dirt, grass, leaves, or snow. Mammoths were even known to bury other dead animals, including humans.”

“It’s always been you even when I didn’t want it to be, even when it broke my heart over and over again. It’s just always been you.”

“What happened is the least of it. It’s a novel, and once you’ve finished a novel, what happened in it is of little importance and soon forgotten. What matters are the possibilities and ideas that the novel’s imaginary plot communicates to us and infuses us with, a plot that we recall far more vividly than real events and to which we pay far more attention.”

“The Internet was a wonderful invention. It was a computer network which people used to remind other people that they were awful pieces of shit.”

“Sometimes the very best stuff can seem quite plain, until one examines it closely. It is only then that one sees its true quality.”