“We are nature. Our every tinkering is nature, our every biological striving. We are what we are, and the world is ours. We are its gods. Your only difficulty is your unwillingness to unleash your p...”

“Pain held no terror for him. Pain was, if not friend, then family, something he had grown up with in his crche, learning to respect but never yield to. Pain was simply a message, telling him which ...”

“The problem with surviving was that you ended up with the ghosts of everyone youd ever left behind riding on your shoulders.”

“You couldnt live close to war and not have it grab you eventually.”

“Hell, were all bullet bait sooner or later. Doubt it makes much difference. You make it to sixteen, youre a goddamn legend.”

“Her face was smeared with mud and blood and ash. Just another bit of debris in the wreckage of war.”

“There are two types of seeds in the mind: those that create anger, fear, frustration, jealousy, hatred and those that create love, compassion, equanimity and joy. Spirituality is germination and sp...”

“My music teacher offered twittering madrigals and something about how, in Italy, in Italy, the oranges hang on the tree. He treated me - the humiliation of it - as a soprano.These, by contrast, are...”

“If you spend your time hoping someone will suffer the consequences for what they did to your heart, then you're allowing them to hurt you a second time in your mind.”

“One of the new things people began to find out in the last century was that thoughts- just mere thoughts- are as powerful as electric batteries- as good for one as sunlight is, or as bad for one as...”

“I have seen these persons speak unthinkingly, not realizing that to speak is also to be. Word and gesture are man's thought. We should not speak without reason.”

“Iron turns red when it corrodes, and copper turns green. Meat turns to maggots, and thoughts turn to speech.”