“They can't change (...). But Ido believe they have a beast within. In some it's buried so deep they'll never feel it; inothers it stirs, and if a person can't give it a safe voice it warps and rots and breaks out inevil ways. They may not be able to change, but they still can be the beast of their ownnightmares. It's our blessing that we can exorcise those demons. Sometimes it's our curse.”

“It's instinct," he said then. "For centuries, it's been our job to protect our home, our women, and our children. We're emotional cowards. We don't talk about our feelings, we're not comfortable putting our soul into words. So we give of ourselves the only way we know how. We protect. We smother those we love in protection, fight for ways to keep them always safe, even from what we deem as a threat from themselves. It's in our genes, Kira. Right or wrong. Emotions are harder for a man to voice, strength is much easier for us to show. It's not an insult, it's the way men show their emotions for those they love. You can't change it.""I can protect myself.”

“Sometimes," Jem said, "our lives can change so fast that the change outpaces our minds and hearts. It's those times, I think, when our lives have altered but we still long for the time before everything was altered-- that is when we feel the greatest pain. I can tell you, though, from experience, you grow accustomed to it. You learn to live your new life, and you can't imagine, or even really remember, how things were before.”

“There are some things I guess we bury so we can get on with living. I don't think it's wrong, necessarily, just what we do to survive. It's the remembering part that's hard. Some people remember and some never have to. The blessed and the cursed.”

“Sometimes life has it's ups and downs. But it's the choices we make that changes our future. Some choices help us and some don't. But the only way we will find out is if we try.”

“We can't change the world by shouting, but our words can have meaning if we give them enough respect.”