… the encounter with a reader was a pleasure. After all, they’d read his book and it had an impact, otherwise why would they come up to him? The meeting had an intimate quality; two strangers were coming together, but to discuss an external matter, a faith object that had moved them both, so all barriers fell. This was no place for lies or bombast.”
-- Narration (Part 1)

Importance: On one level, this quote from the novel’s first page evokes the pleasure that protagonist Henry feels, and that would arguably be felt by any writer, at learning that his or her work has been received positively. On another level, the quite ironically foreshadows the meeting, later in the narrative, between the two central characters, a meeting that starts in much the same sort of spirit as the meeting described here, but which eventually leads into a relationship that's not much of a pleasure...