“If there is anything I’ve learned being the mother of many children, it’s that you’d better laugh at yourself, because everyone else already is.”

“...as bad as it is here, it's better than being somewhere else."-Chris Rose, regarding life in Post-Katrina New Orleans”

“In a cruel land, you either learned to laugh at cruelty or spent your life weeping.”

“Don’t listen to what people tell you because they’ll try to bring you down. And don’t listen to yourself, either, because yourself will try to bring you down even more so than anyone else. As long as you just put all your energy into one thing, it can happen.”

“Yes...how else could Demandred explain the skill of the enemy general? Only a man with the experience of an ancient was so masterly at the dance of battlefields. At their core, many battle tactics were simple. Avoid being flanked, meet heavy force with pikes, infantry with a well-trained line, channelers with other channelers. And yet, the finesse of it...the little details...these took centuries to master. No man from this Age had lived long enough to learn the details with such care.”

“I’ve tried being other people and myself suits me the best.”

“It would be something fine if we could learn how to bless the lives of children. They are the people of new life. Children are the only people nobody can blame. They are the only ones always willing to make a start; they have no choice. Children are the ways the world begin again and again."But in general, our children have no voice--that we will listen to. We force, we blank them into the bugle/bell regulated lineup of the Army/school, and we insist on silence."But even if we cannot learn to bless their lives (our future times), at least we can try to find out how we already curse and burden their experience: how we limit the wheeling of their inner eyes, how we terrify their trust, and how we condemn the raucous laughter of their natural love. What's more, if we will hear them, they will teach us what they need; they will bluntly formulate the tenderness of their deserving.”