“It's as if they'd heard that there are values one is supposed to honor and this is what one does to honor them -- so they went through the motions, like ghosts pulled by some sort of distant echoes from a better age.”

“It's so graceless, being a martyr. It's honoring your adversaries too much.”

“He thought--while his hand moved rapidly--what a power there was in words; later, for those who heard them, but first for the one who found them; a healing power, a solution, like the breaking of a barrier.”

“Happiness is that state of consciousness which proceeds from the achievement of one's value.”

“She watched the tunnels as they flowed past: bare walls of concrete, a net of pipes and wires, a web of rails that went off into black holes where green and red lights hung as distant drops of color. There was nothing else to dilute it, so that one could admire naked purpose and the ingenuity that had achieved it.”

“They say sound never dies, but travels on in space--what happens to a man's heartbeats?--so many of them in fifty-six years--could they be gathered again, in some sort of condenser, and put to use once more?”

“Love should be treated like a business deal, but every business deal has its own terms and its own currency. And in love, the currency is virtue. You love people not for what you do for them or what they do for you. You love them for the values, the virtues, which they have achieved in their own character.”