“A regime that wraps itself in the flag of truth fears truth most of all, for if its story is falsified to the slightest degree, its authority is gone.”

“(Rigg) had often complained that all these languages were useless, and Father had only said, "A man who speaks but one language understands none.”

“Government is all show when it isn't murder in the dark ... or soldiers in the open.”

“She likes us, said Umbo. I know, I could feel it too, said Rigg. Shes really glad to have us here. I think she loves us like her own children. Whom she murdered and cut up into the stew. They were ...”

“He committed the crime of stupidity while under my command," said Citizen."Oh my," said Rigg. "They're handing out the death penalty for that these days?”

“Maybe that's all demons ever are. People like us, doing things without even knowing what we're doing.”

“Question the answers, I repeated every class. Reevaluate your conclusions when the evidence changes.”

“I wanted that future officer to weigh decisions with a supple mind and to be comfortable with nuance and uncertainty. ”

“Our life is just as long or short as our remembering: as rich as our imagining, as vibrant as our feeling, and as profound as our thinking.”

“Perseverance is the hard work you do after you get tired of doing the hard work you already did.”

“As Blake wrote in The Marriage of Heaven and Hell: You never know what is enough unless you know what is more than enough.”

“It is too difficult to think nobly when one thinks only of earning a living.”

“I was happy, but happy is an adult word. You don't have to ask a child about happy, you see it. They are or they are not. Adults talk about being happy because largely they are not. Talking about i...”

“Dear God," she prayed, "let me be something every minute of every hour of my life. Let me be gay; let me be sad. Let me be cold; let me be warm. Let me be hungry...have too much to eat. Let me be r...”

“I walked over to the hill where we used to go and sled. There were a lot of little kids there. I watched them flying. Doing jumps and having races. And I thought that all those little kids are goin...”