“Good guys don't always finish last they just win a different race.”

“Stories never really end...even if the books like to pretend they do. Stories always go on. They don't end on the last page, any more than they begin on the first page.”

“Well,' Rydell said, trying to pick up his end, 'I was watching this one old movie last night-'Sublett perked up. 'Which one?'Dunno,' Rydell said. 'This guy's in L.A. and he's just met this girl. Then he picks up a pay phone, 'cause it's ringing. Late at night. It's some guy in a missile silo somewhere who knows they've just launched theirs at the Russians. He's trying to phone his dad, or his brother, or something. Says the world's gonna end in short order. Then the guy who answered the phone hears these soldiers come in and shoot the guy. The guy on the phone, I mean.'Suhlett closed his eyes, scanning his inner trivia-banks. 'Yeah? How's it end?'Dunno,' Rydell said. 'I went to sleep.”

“So it's happened, I kept thinking, you're in the middle of a story exactly as you've always wanted, and it's horrible. Fear tastes quite different when you're not just reading about it, Meggie, and playing hero wasn't half as much fun as I'd expected.”

“Sometimes it's a good thing we don't remember things half as well as books do.”

“I don't know who said it but, "The best revenge is to live a good life.”

“Weren’t all books ultimately related? After all, the same letters filled them, just arranged in a different order. Which meant that, in a certain way, every book was contained in every other!”