“She scolded him with fire in her eyes, feeling where he was going, feeling as if she was stabbed in the heart. “I wasn’t saying it was bad. Different doesn’t mean bad. In fact, I think you are so . . . beautiful! What you say . . . it makes sense to me in ways I can’t even understand.”

“Mom, Dad, I’m fourteen, I see what the world is like. And, no, I did not get this from the psychologist...I came to this understanding on my own, from what I really see in myself and about life.”

“Where do thoughts come from, Father?”King Mafferan looked deeply into his twelve-year-old eyes. “While I may not be sure all thoughts are my own, I am sure when I own them.”

“It seemed that for every evil they defeated, worse took its place, but Vaughn banished the thought that this all might be a cruel game, a hoax played on the… ''No! I know what true Goodness, true Life, true Love is. Besides, this is too miserable to be a game…unless demons…NO! Besides, even if I was some kind of pawn, well, then this game piece would rebel!”

“My daughter, people are only used to seeing the glorified in a story, because a story is only a tiny, tiny piece of a person’s life. Legends, sacred writings, they’re all like that. But I assure you, dear child, every one of those people up there on that wall felt like, thought like, and suffered like you!”

“The problem is, we have too many cowardly, spineless, selfish people that would sacrifice their children’s future just to avoid the sacrifice love requires of them in the present. And they expect their children to respect them for that? Do they think we’re idiots just because we’re young?”

“When I say that life is like an onion, I mean this: if you don't do anything with it, it goes rotten. So far, that's no different from other vegetables. But when an onion goes bad, it can either do it from the inside, or the outside. So sometimes you see one that looks good, but the core is rotten. Other times, you can see a bad spot on it, but if you cut that out, the rest is fine. Tastes sharp, but that's what you paid for, isn't it?”