“Darkness gives free rein to the mind's worst imaginings”

“There is no treasure like the human heart.”

“Blood was the mortar that cemented the kingdom”

“True beauty cannot fail to move the beholder”

“What good is a secret if it remains a secret ... Secrets are meant to be discovered...”

“Despite your best efforts, people are going to be hurt when it's time for them to be hurt.”

“At the end of the day it's about how much you can bear, how much you can endure. Being together, we harm nobody; being apart, we extinguish ourselves.”

“Life is not a PG feel-good movie. Real life often ends badly. Literature tries to document this reality, while showing us it is still possible for us to endure nobly.”

“A true philosopher must never give up.”

“...these sleepless nights, when oddly enough my concentration was high, fueled perhaps by the effort to ignore the all-engrossing threat of bombs and rockets.”

“Never, never, never give in!”

“A wise person knows that he should not allow his roots to grow too deep in this world, for the deeper they grow here, the shallower they become in spirituality.”

“Quite possibly there's nothing as fine as a big freight train starting across country in early summer, Hardesty thought. That's when you learn that the tragedy of plants is that they have roots.”

“I feel weird spilling it now but have to. Because after a while, it took root, the way shared stories do when you live with them long enough. They affect your DNA like radiation. They give birth to...”