“I will tell you what I will do and what I will not do. I will not serve that in which I no longer believe, whether it calls itself my home, my fatherland, or my church: and I will try to express myself in some mode of life or art as freely as I can and as wholly as I can, using for my defense the only arms I allow myself to use -- silence, exile, and cunning.”

“History, Stephen said, is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake.”

“His heart danced upon her movements like a cork upon a tide. He heard what her eyes said to him from beneath their cowl and knew that in some dim past, whether in life or revery, he had heard their tale before.”

“And then I asked him with my eyes to ask again yes and then he asked me would I yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will yes.”

“Think you're escaping and run into yourself. Longest way round is the shortest way home.”

“Shut your eyes and see.”

Patriotism is the willingness to kill and be killed for trivial reasons

“Never a possession, always the possessor, with skin as pale as smoke, and eyes tawny and sharp as yellow wine: Desire is everything you've ever wanted. Whoever you are. Whatever you are. Everything.”

“Stories are in one way or another mirrors. We use them to explain to ourselves how the world works or how it doesn’t work. Like mirrors stories prepare us for the day to come. They distract us from the things in darkness.”

“M is for magic. All the letters are, if you put them together properly. You can make magic with them, and dreams, and, I hope, even a few surprises...”

“There was a skyness to the sky and a nowness to the world that he had never seen or felt or realized before.”

“The men in the room suddenly realized that they didn’t want to know her better. She was beautiful, but she was beautiful in the way a forest fire was beautiful: something to be admired from a distance, not up close.”

“If you only write when inspired, you may be a fairly decent poet, but you'll never be a novelist.”

“If he didn't care about you, you couldn't upset him.”

“If he didn't care about you, you couldn't upset him.”

“I believe in absolute honesty and sensible social lies.”

“Remember your name. Do not lose hope--what you seek will be found. Trust ghosts. Trust those that you have helped to help you in their turn. Trust dreams. Trust your heart, and trust your story.”

“The important thing to understand about American history, wrote Mr. Ibis, in his leather-bound journal, is that it is fictional, a charcoal-sketched simplicity for the children, or the easily bored.”

“Call no man happy, said Shadow, until he is dead”

“Nobody will ever hurt her. She’ll just smile her faint vague wonderful smile and walk away.”

“The world always seems brighter when you've just made something that wasn't there before.”

“Have you ever had one of those days when something just seems to be trying to tell you somebody?”

“I was not happy as a child, although from time to time I was content. I lived in books more than I lived anywhere else.”

“We are all wearing masks. That is what makes us interesting.”