“That's why there are ten gates to pass through before you reach the garden. If life were easy there would be one gate. There would be no gates at all.”

“After another ten minutes, the gates of thievery would open just a crack, and Liesel Meminger would widen them a little further and squeeze through. ***TWO QUESTIONS***Would the gates shut behind her?Or would they have the goodwill to let her back out?As Liesel would discover, a good thief requires many things.Stealth. Nerve. Speed.More important than any of those things, however, was one final requirement.Luck.Actually.Forget the ten minutes.The gates open now.”

“The Gates of Heaven and the Gates of Hell are the same gates. It just depends which side you're standing on when you walk through.”

“There are twin Gates of Sleep. One, they say, is called the Gate of Horn and it offers easy passage to all true shades. The other glistens with ivory, radiant, flawless, but through it the dead send false dreams up toward the sky. And here Anchises, his vision told in full, escorts his son and Sibyl both and shows them out now through the Ivory Gate.”

“Happiness is a choice you make when you allow faith through the entry gate and fear through the exit gate.”

“As this life is not a gate, but the horse plunging through it.”