“My father's attitude was that this was but an inevitable phase of my growing up and he affected to take it lightly. But beneath his jocular, boys-together air, he was at a loss, he was frightened. ...”

“For I am—or I was—one of those people who pride themselves in on their willpower, on their ability to make a decision and carry it through. This virtue, like most virtues, is ambiguity itself. Peop...”

“Perhaps home is not a place but simply an irrevocable condition.”

“If you cannot love me, I will die. Before you came I wanted to die, I have told you many times. It is cruel to have made me want to live only to make my death more bloody.”

“I thought of the people before me who had looked down at the river and gone to sleep beneath it. I wondered about them. I wondered how they had done it--it, the physical act.I simply wondered about...”

“Tell me, he said, "What is this thing about time? Why is it better to be late than early? People are always saying, we must wait, we must wait. what are they waiting for?""Well […] I guess people w...”

“The world is mostly divided between madmen who remember and madmen who forget. Heroes are rare.”

“perhaps,thought Felix,that's what magic is--physics with a different twist to it.my world just hasn't discovered the twist.”

“You forget all of it anyway. First, you forget everything you learned-the dates of the Hay-Herran Treaty and Pythagorean Theorem. You especially forget everything you didn't really learn, but just ...”

“It is strange how easy it is to remember pain.”

“Sometimes... I feel like I can't picture him anymore. Like I'm forgetting him... I forget the way he looked when he smiled. The sound of his voice. The way his hand felt wrapped around mine. And it...”

“I built an idea in my head of the hero I wanted to be, a grab bag of traits from heroes, villains, and side characters. I did not have book role models, I had book blueprints.But there remained a h...”

“I am not always good and noble. I am the hero of this story, but I have my off moments.”

“Ethan: "You think I'm a hero?"Beth: "Yes."Ethan: "But lousy husband material?" Like that really mattered to him.Beth: "Don't sweat it. So was Superman.”