“Because I don't think God trusts just anybody with so much heartache. The world has not yet seen what God can do with a man who gives both halves of a broken heart to him. And I don't doubt that a man like that can change the world...or at least a little part of it.”

“You may forsake a person, a family, some location of the heart, but scars and memories cannot be discarded like used clothing.”

“You'll never experience the joy and tenderness of a lifelong love unless you fight for it.”

“Once the world has made a decision, there is little anyone can do to change its mind.”

“You are wrong. If there is anything I have learned in my travels across the Planes, it is that many things may change the nature of a man. Whether regret, or love, or revenge or fear - whatever you believe can change the nature of a man, can. I've seen belief move cities, make men stave off death, and turn an evil hag's heart half-circle. This entire Fortress has been constructed from belief. Belief damned a woman, whose heart clung to the hope that another loved her when he did not. Once, it made a man seek immortality and achieve it. And it has made a posturing spirit think it is something more than a part of me.”

“I never saw so much life left in someone who had lived so much," said Bernice Latelle, a gospel singer who lived in Bessie's neighborhood and heard her at the Wander Inn. "I don't think anybody or anything could break that woman's spirit.”

“Isn't it sad, growing up? You start off like my Charlie. You start off thinking you can kill all the baddies and save the world. Then you get a little bit older, maybe Little Bee's age, and you realize that some of the world's badness is inside you, that maybe you're a part of it. And then you get a bit older still, and a bit more comfortable, and you start wondering whether that badness you've seen in yourself is really all that bad at all. You start talking about ten per cent."Maybe that's just developing as a person, Sarah."I sighed and looked out at Little Bee Well," I said, "maybe this is a developing world.”