“You cannot conceive, nor can I, of the appalling strangeness of the mercy of God.”

“A brain was only capable of what it could conceive, and it couldn't conceive what it had never experienced”

“I know one thing you don't. I know the difference between Right and Wrong. They didn't teach you that at school.'Rose didn't answer the woman was quite right: the two words meant nothing to her. Th...”

“But you do believe, dont you," Rose implored him, "you think its true?" "Of course its true," the Boy said. "What else could there be?" he went scornfully on. "Why," he said, "its the only thing th...”

“You cant conceive, my child, nor can I or anyone the appalling strangeness of the mercy of God.”

“Fun... human nature... does no one any harm... Regular as clockwork the old excuses came back into the alert, sad and dissatisfied brain--nothing ever matched the deep excitement of the regular des...”

“The only calibration that counts is how much heart people invest, how much they ignore their fears of being hurt or caught out or humiliated. And the only thing people regret is that they didn't li...”

“I wonder if fears ever really go away, or if they just lose their power over us.”

“Fear is all in the mind”

“Do you know what punishments I've endured for my crimes, my sins? None. I am proof of the absurdity of men's most treasured abstractions. A just universe wouldn't tolerate my existence.”

“Maybe I should have gone into politics. If you were a political activist, election season brought moments of intensity, whichever side you were on, and meanwhile here I was inarguably withering away,”

“What, more realistically, is this mutation, the new man? He is the rootless man, discontinuous with a past that Nihilism has destroyed, the raw material of every demagogues dream; the free-thinker ...”