“For free will is what makes us Heaven's creatures.”

“What's that?" he asked, when I stood beside him again."Halos," I said with a grin. "For heavenly creatures like us.""That might be a stretch.”

“Our tears are precious, necessary, and part of what make us such endearing creatures.”

“Some books leave us free and some books make us free.”

“Heaven deliver us, what's a poet? Something that can't go to bed without making a song about it.”

“Every time you make a choice you are turning the central part of you, the part of you that chooses, into something a little different than it was before. And taking your life as a whole, with all your innumerable choices, all your life long you are slowly turning this central thing into a heavenly creature or a hellish creature: either into a creature that is in harmony with God, and with other creatures, and with itself, or else into one that is in a state of war and hatred with God, and with its fellow creatures, and with itself. To be the one kind of creature is heaven: that is, it is joy and peace and knowledge and power. To be the other means madness, horror, idiocy, rage, impotence, and eternal loneliness. Each of us at each moment is progressing to the one state of the other.”