“You will never be tougher than you are now. Children are the toughest creatures on the planet. They endure.”

“No harm in listening. Alexei's a child, not a wizard. We don't lose control of our brains by listening.”

“Stories can start revolutions.”

“It's inhuman to take your books away before you know the end.”

“Cowardice is for cowards. Fear is for people with brains and eyes and functioning nerve endings.”

“Wolves are the witches of the animal world.”

“once sailed neither the ship nor the shore ever remains the same again.”

“We are not trapped or locked up in these bones. No, no. We are free to change. And love changes us. And if we can love one another, we can break open the sky.”

“One day spent with someone you love can change everything.”

“They had killed themselves over our dying forests, over manatees maimed by propellers as they surfaced to drink from garden hoses; they had killed themselves at the sight of used tires stacked high...”

“The world seemed to shimmer a little at the edges.”

“If we cannot accept the importance of the world, which considers itself important, if in the midst of that world our laughter finds no echo, we have but one choice: to take the world as a whole and...”