“My sister, the one who knows everything and pulls out facts out of a bottomless hat, told me people aren't afraid of snakes or water upon birth. It is only once we hear the snake and water stories,...”

“... no matter how we go about it, we are never poorer for the experiences that teach us how to write our own manuals.”

“Even in Sri Lanka, the worst only happened in my imagination, I'd say, and this is so because we live on a planet where good people outnumber bad.”

“... beginnings are always reserved for anxiety, middles are for experience, problems and troubleshooting, and only once the beginning and middle have been combined to form a past can room be made f...”

“Safety is an illusion and perhaps it's better to challenge it sometimes, to see how far we can go, to learn about the stuff we are made of.”

“Llarimar had told him to do his best. That sounded like an awful lot of work. Unfortunately, doing nothing was beginning to seem like even MORE work.”

“In his opinion, working was vastly overrated. Particularly as a way to build character, for everyone who engaged in it was far too snappish and fussy, and seemed to have no manners at all.”

“There was a sergeant at a desk. I knew he was a sergeant because I recognized the marks on his uniform, and I knew it was a desk because it's always a desk. There's always someone at a desk, except...”

“We live in a world of shadow and light, pain and joy. We spend our entire lives investigating the many possible patterns of human experience including interactions between humankind and nature and ...”

“We only live once, so why not do something different?”