“Because if you don't stand up for the stuff you don't like, when they come for the stuff you do like, you've already lost.”

“If it's true that every seven years each cell in your body dies and is replaced, then I have truly inherited my life from a dead man; and the misdeeds of those times have been forgiven, and are buried with his bones.”

“As far as I'm concerned, the entire reason for becoming a writer is not having to get up in the morning. ”

“It's always too late for sorries, but I appreciate the sentiment.”

“The only advice I can give you is what you're telling yourself. Only, maybe you're too scared to listen.”

“I think I would rather be a man than a god. We don’t need anyone to believe in us. We just keep going anyhow. It’s what we do.”

“It has always been the prerogative of children and half-wits to point out that the emperor has no clothes. But a half-wit remains a half-wit, and the emperor remains an emperor.”

“Things bloosom in their time. They bud and bloom, blossom and fade. Everything in its time.”

“I think I’ll dismember the world and then I’ll dance in the wreckage.”

“Adults should not weep, I knew. They did not have mothers who would comfort them.”

“A story only matters, I suspect, to the extent that the people in the story change.”

“It is a fool's prerogative to utter truths that no one else will speak.”

“It is a fool's prerogative to utter truths that no one else will speak.”

“His name is Marcus: he is four and a half and possesses that deep gravity and seriousness that only small children and mountain gorillas have ever been able to master.”

“He was painfully shy, which, as is often the manner of the painfully shy, he overcompensated for by being too loud at the wrong times.”

“Liberty," boomed Wednesday, as they walked to the car, "is a bitch who must be bedded on a mattress of corpses.”

“This isn't about what is . . . it's about what people think is. It's all imaginary anyway. That's why it's important. People only fight over imaginary things.”

“It's still National Library Week. You should be especially nice to a librarian today, or tomorrow. Sometime this week, anyway. Probably the librarians would like tea. Or chocolates. Or a reliable source of funding.”

“Nothing’s changed. You’ll go home. You’ll be bored. You’ll be ignored. No one will listen to you, really listen to you. You’re too clever and too quiet for them to understand. They don’t even get your name right.”

“Because,” said Thor, “when something goes wrong, the first thing I always think is, it is Loki’s fault. It saves a lot of time.”

“Mirrors,' she said, 'are never to be trusted.”

“As we age, we become our parents; live long enough and we see faces repeat in time.”

“Remember: when people tell you something’s wrong or doesn’t work for them, they are almost always right. When they tell you exactly what they think is wrong and how to fix it, they are almost always wrong.”

“Too much talking these days. Talk talk talk. This country would get along much better if people learned how to suffer in silence.”