“You can't own a human being. You can't lose what you don't own. Suppose you did own him. Could you really love somebody who was absolutely nobody without you? You really want somebody like that? So...”

“Dominion won by fear and secured by fear was still sweeter than any that could be got another way.”

“If you surrendered to the air, you could ride it.”

“See? See what you can do? Never mind you cant tell one letter from another, never mind you born a slave, never mind you lose your name, never mind your daddy dead, never mind nothing. Here, this he...”

“Her passions were narrow but deep.”

“You wanna fly, you got to give up the shit that weighs you down.”

“[He] made me feel lonely, and being alone with another person is much worse than being alone all by yourself.”

“He wondered if there was anyone in the world who liked him. Liked him for himself alone.”

“They had killed themselves over our dying forests, over manatees maimed by propellers as they surfaced to drink from garden hoses; they had killed themselves at the sight of used tires stacked high...”

“The world seemed to shimmer a little at the edges.”

“If we cannot accept the importance of the world, which considers itself important, if in the midst of that world our laughter finds no echo, we have but one choice: to take the world as a whole and...”