"She had normal morphology. She loved that word. But what's inside the form and structure? The mind and soul, hers and everyone's, keep dreaming toward something unreachable. Does this mean there's something there, at the limits of matter and energy, a force responsible in some way for the very nature, the vibrancy of our lives from the mind out, the mind in little pigeon blinks that extend the plane of being, out beyond logic and intuition." - Don DeLillo's 'Falling Man'

" 'But then there's this other thing and that's the family. This is the point I want to make, that we need to stay together, keep the family going. Just us, three of us, long-term, under the same roof, not every day of the year or every month but with the idea that we're permanent. Times like these, the family is necessary." - Don DeLillo's 'Falling Man'

" 'But then there's this other thing and that's the family. This is the point I want to make, that we need to stay together, keep the family going. Just us, three of us, long-term, under the same roof, not every day of the year or every month but with the idea that we're permanent. Times like these, the family is necessary." - Don DeLillo's 'Falling Man'

"She wasn't sure why she was looking so intently. She was passing beyond pleasure into some kind of assimilation. She was trying to absorb what she saw, take it home, wrap it around her, sleep in it. There was so much to see. Turn it into living tissue, who you are." - Don DeLillo's 'Falling Man'

"He had to learn how to see it correctly, find a crack in the world where it might fit." - Don DeLillo's 'Falling Man'

"But then she might be wrong about what was ordinary. Maybe nothing was. Maybe there was a deep fold in the grain of things, the way things pass through the mind, the way time swings in the mind, which it eh only place it meaningfully exists." - Don DeLillo's 'Falling Man'

"She wanted to absorb everything, childlike, the dust of stray sensation, whatever she could breathe in from other people's pores. She used to think she was other people. Other people have truer lives." - Don DeLillo's 'Falling Man'

"She listened to what he said and let him know she was listening, mind and body, because listening is what would save them this time, keep them from falling into distortion and rancor." - Don DeLillo's 'Falling Man'

"The world changes first in the mind of the man who wants to change it." - Don DeLillo's 'Falling Man'

" 'I've forgotten how to talk to you. This is the longest talk we've had.'
'You did it better than anybody. Talk to me. Maybe that was the problem.'
'I guess I've unlearned it. Because I sit here thinking we have much to say.'
'We don't have so much to say. We used to say everything, all the time. We examined everything, all the questions, all the issues.'
'All right.'
'It practically killed us.'
'All right. But is it possible? Here's my question,' she said. 'Is it possible you and I are done with conflict? You know what I mean. The everyday friction. The every-word every-breath scheduled we were on before we split. Is it possible this is over? We don't need this anymore. We can live without it. Am I right?'
'We're ready to sink into our little lives,' he said." - Don DeLillo's 'Falling Man'

"He used to want to fly out of self-awareness, day and night, a body in raw motion. Now he finds himself drifting into spells of reflection, thinking not in clear units, hard and linked, but only absorbing what comes, drawing things out of time and memory and into some dim space that bears his collected experience." - Don DeLillo's 'Falling Man'

"Disbelief was the line of travel that led to clarity of thought and purpose. Or was this simply another form of superstition? She wanted to trust in the forces and processes of the natural world, this only, perceptible reality and scientific endeavor, men and women alone on earth. She knew there was no conflict between science and God. Take one with the other. But she didn't want to. There were the scholars and philosophers she'd studied in school, books she'd read as thrilling dispatches, personal, making her shake at times, and there was the sacred art she'd always loved. Doubters created this work, and ardent believers, ad those who'd doubted and then believed, and she was free to think and doubt and believe simultaneously. But she didn't want to. God would crowd her, make her weaker. God would be a presence that remained unimaginable. She wanted this only, to snuff out the pulse of the shaky faith she'd held for much of her life." - Don DeLillo's 'Falling Man'

" 'Forget God. These are matters of history. This is politics and economics. All the things that shape lives, millions of people, dispossessed, their lives, their consciousness.' " - Don DeLillo's 'Falling Man'

"In the movie version, someone would be in the building, an emotionally damaged woman or a homeless old man, and there would be dialogue and close-ups." - Don DeLillo's 'Falling Man'

"Yes, I know that love is unconditional. But I also know it can be unpredictable, unexpected, uncontrollable, unbearable, and strangely easy to mistake for loathing." - Yvaine in Stardust