Edward Bloor

“All of our time, energy, and money go into keeping people away from us, into building up walls. What if we didn't do that? What if we became part of the world around us? What if we used all of that time, energy, and money for something else? For a greater good? We would no longer be people who were only worth a trash bag full of ransom money. We would be people who were worth something real.”

“You shouldn't be too hard with little boys. You should treat them as precious, because that's what they are. —James Harker”

“Life is complicated. You don't only have two simple choices: drunk or teetotaler; saint or sinner. It's more complicated than that.”

“Remember that, lad, if you never remember anything else. We all touch each other's lives, for better or for worse. So say the things you have to say to people while you still have the chance.”

“There are a lot of sad stories. It seems like everybody has one to tell.”

“Now you, as a young person, may have no faith in your country, or in your church, or in your family. But you can still have faith in an ideal. If you have an ideal in front of you, you will never get lost on the journey of life. It is, after all, the journey that matters.”

“Life is hard when you have no one to stick up for you. People push you around, purely because there's no one to stop them from pushing you around.”

“A person is not really gone until everyone who knew them is gone.”

“But be careful about the parts you agree to play...You never know when one is going to stick.”

“History repeats itself only in that, from afar, we all seem to lead exactly the same life. We are all born; we all spend time here on earth; we all die. But, up close, we have each walked down our own separate paths. We have stood at our own lonely crossroads. We have touched the lives of others at crucial points, for better or for worse. In the end, each of us has lived a unique life story, astounding and complicated, a story taht could never be repeated.”

“You get as many chances as you want; as many as you dare to make for yourself.”

“Once you've been taken, you usually have twenty-four hours left to live.”

“I had no night terrors. Maybe when your real life becomes the terror, there's just nothing left to dream about”