“Your life ain't a target for the world to shoot at. The world is a target for your life to shoot at.”

“It's one of the happy things about a world gone so wrong: your personal freakishness don't stand out so much.”

“To stop. To cease, just for a moment. To turn your back on the world, to close your eyes - to see the nothing that is not rather than the nothing that is everywhere around you. To just be quiet in your mind for a little minute. There are paradises even yet on the abandoned plains of the earth -- and they are not filled with fecund flowering Edens but rather just with sweet unerring silences.”

“They belong, Temple thinks. They have the stink of belonging wherever they go. This world is their world, and they take possession of every yard they cover, and they run the sun to its grave every night.”

“The world, it treats you kind enough so long as you're not fightin against it.”

“Everyone's always tryin to find an entrance to the kingdom of heaven, she says. Me, I ain't so interested in entrances. All I want's a kingdom of exits.”

“Some people, he says, they hide themselves away from the eyes of the world. They hunker down and shiver. They find four walls high enough to put between them and everything else. Those people, to them the world is a frightful place. See, you and me, we're different. When we are called on to move, we move. It don't matter the cause or the distance. Revenge or ministration, reason or folly - it's all the same to us.”