“There ain't no way you can hold onto something that wants to go, you understand? You can only love what you got while you got it.”

“It is a bad thing to have love and nowhere to put it.”

“Oh, my goodness, said Louisiana. Im just all filled up with feathers and regrets. And fears. I have a lot of fears.”

“You can't always judge people by the things they done. You got to judge them by what they are doing now.”

“Reader, do you think it is a terrible thing to hope when there is really no reason to hope at all? Or is it (as the soldier said about happiness) something that you might just as well do, since,in ...”

“And hope is like love...a ridiculous, wonderful, powerful thing.”

“Denna is a wild thing," I explained. "Like a hind or a summer storm. If a storm blows down your house, or breaks a tree, you don't say the storm was mean. It was cruel. It acted according to its na...”

“Fear is the main source of superstition, and one of the main sources of cruelty. To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom.”

“Cruelty and fear shake hands together. An unfulfilled vocation drains the color from a man's entire existence.”

“Despereaux was reading the story out loud to himself. He was reading from the beginning so that he could get to the end...”

“This is a wonderful joke to play upon a prisoner, to promise forgiveness.”

“Besides, who ever asked you what you wanted in this world, girl?The answer to that question, reader, as you well know, was absolutely no one.”

“She was bendable light: she shone around every corner of my day.”

“Over the summit, I saw the so-called Mono desert lying dreamily silent in the thick, purple light -- a desert of heavy sun-glare beheld from a desert of ice-burnished granite.”

“Love is a weapon of Light, and it has the power to eradicate all forms of darkness. That is the key. When we offer love even to our enemies, we destroy their darkness and hatred...”