“And you know what? If there is a God, and it's that same God who's so eager to have temples built in honor of his greatness, and wars fought over him, and people dropping to their knees telling him...”

“Dex's mother knew she should be afraid for her daughter. This, she'd been told, was the tragedy of being a girl. To live in fearit was the fate of any parent, maybe, but the special provenance of a...”

“It's significantly more satisfying to kick a wall than it is to kick thin air. For the rebellious teen- or the teen who wants to feel like a rebel- a clearly defined law gives you something to defi...”

“Popularity gives you power only over people who care about being popular. Ostracism gives you power only over those who fear being ostracized.”

“A fundamentalist is someone who wants to substitute what he believes for what you believe," Max said. "And someone who thinks he knows the will of God better than anyone else.”

“I longed to return to that bloody riverbank, to throw myself in the path of the final arrow, to die ignorant, and so, in love. Better to be killed by an arrow than by the words of the one I most tr...”

“Every hidden cell is throbbing with music and life, every fiber thrilling like harp strings.”

“Entering a cell, penetrating deep as a flying saucer to find a new galaxy would be an honorable task for a new scientist interested more in the inner state of the soul than in outer space.”

“You are most beautiful in your purest form. You are a manifestation of God himself. Open your eyes and let the light flow right through to your core. All it takes is for you to notice a flicker of ...”

“I have a history of making decisions very quickly about men. I have always fallen in love fast and without measuring risks. I have a tendency not only to see the best in everyone, but to assume tha...”

“Nobody ever gets what they want when it comes to love.”

“The strength of a love is always misjudged if we evaluate it by its immediate cause and not the stress that went before it, the dark and hollow space full of disappointment and loneliness that prec...”

“If you expect great things of yourself and demand little of others, youll keep resentment far away.”

“There were two ways to be happy: improve your reality, or lower your expectations”

“One recipe for happiness is to have to sense of entitlement.' To this she added a star and noted at the bottom of the page: 'This is not a lesson I have ever been in a position to learn.”