“It's not the face, but the expressions on it. It's not the voice, but what you say. It's not how you look in that body, but the thing you do with it. You are beautiful.”

“Eight full lives, I whispered against his jaw, my voice breaking. Eight full lives and I never found anyone I would stay on a planet for, anyone I would follow when they left. I never found a partn...”

“What am I dying for?”

“How could you fall in love with a three inch worm?”

“Um," Doc said in a mild voice, "medically speaking, I'm not sure that was the most helpful thing for his condition.""But I feel better," Jared answered, sullen.Doc smiled the tiniest smile. "Well, ...”

“Strange world isn't it?”

“I've been making a list of the things they don't teach you at school. They don't teach you how to love somebody. They don't teach you how to be famous. They don't teach you how to be rich or how to...”

“[C]oncepts of dying in to a heaven or hell seem a good deal more political than spiritual. (124)”

“I want to live the rest of my life, however long or short, with as much sweetness as I can decently manage, loving all the people I love, and doing as much as I can of the work I still have to do. ...”

“The life of my people is to remember forever; each head granary is full. The life of your people is to forget: your thing granaries ("museums"), and not yourselves, are full.”

“We are now in the mountains and they are in us, kindling enthusiasm, making every nerve quiver, filling every pore and cell of us.”

“The living sinners on deadly ground.”