“I know too well how dangerous hope can be, how it grows and sometimes dies, taking its host with it. It's more powerful than anything Dr.Fibs keeps in his labs, more precious than all the secrets inside Sublevel Two.”

“A giant octopus living way down deep at the bottom of the ocean. It has this tremendously powerful life force, a bunch of long, undulating legs, and it's heading somewhere, moving through the darkness of the ocean… It takes on all kinds of different shapes—sometimes it's 'the nation,' and sometimes it's 'the law,' and sometimes it takes on shapes that are more difficult and dangerous than that. You can try cutting off its legs, but they just keep growing back. Nobody can kill it. It's too strong, and it lives too far down in the ocean. Nobody knows where its heart is. What I felt then was a deep terror. And a kind of hopelessness, a feeling that I could never run away from this thing, no matter how far I went. And this creature, this thing doesn't give a damn that I'm me or you're you. In its presence, all human beings lose their names and their faces. We all turn into signs, into numbers.”

“writing a story is dangerous more dangerous then anyone can know. Its planting small seeds of ideas into peoples minds. Some can grow and spread until there's a whole network of minds connected by one seed. It grows powerful the more ground it takes, sometimes for the better, sometimes for the worse. Be DELIBERATE in your words and, most importantly WRITE.”

“It's about more than just being beautiful. It's about having all of these uncomfortable feelings inside you and not knowing how to express them or deal with them.”

“Is it too late?" I asked Margot Cherry that afternoon. It's been more than thirty years and still I can remember how my voice shook. "How do we know when we've loved someone all that we can?”

“Danger knows full well that Caesar is more dangerous than he. We are two lions litter’d in one day, and I the elder and more terrible.”