“When Lee has a certain look on his face, eyes kind of amused, mouth small and tight, he finds himself thinking of his father. He believes it is a look his father may have used. It feels like his father. A curious sensation, the look coming upon him, taking hold in an unmistakable way, and then his old man is here, eerie and forceful and whole, a meeting across worlds.”

“A man knows when he is growing old because he begins to look like his father.”

“There is here, what is not in the old country. In spite of hard, unfamiliar things, there is here - hope. In the old country, a man can be no more than his father, providing he works hard. If his father was a carpenter, he may be a carpenter. He many not be a teacher or a priest. He may rise - but only to his father's state. In the old country, a man is given to the past. Here he belongs to the future. In this land, he may be what he will, if he has the good heart and the way of working honestly at the right things.”

“Tonight his father had caught up, carrying all the horrors of hell with him. His mother could no longer protect him—hide him—and now his father‟s wrath would fall on him. He ran across the fields and through the forest, his bare feet carrying him as fast as they could go, aching and bleeding into the night. He could feel his father‟s eyes on him and his stinking breath filling Raven‟s nostrils as he rushed toward the only place he had ever found safe. He sobbed, choking on his grief and his frustration—the horrible guilt of carrying all the anger from his father into their house making him sick and afraid. He ran with lungs and muscles burning from strain, throwing himself through the doors of the castle when he reached them and only then chancing to look back the way he‟d come.”

“Despereaux looked at his father, at his grey-streaked fur and trembling whiskers and his front paws clasped together in front of his heart, and he felt suddenly as if his own heart would break in two. His father looked so small, so sad."Forgive me," said Lester again.Forgiveness, reader, is, I think, something very much like hope and love, a powerful, wonderful thing.And a ridiculous thing, too.Isn't it ridiculous, after all, to think that a son could forgive his father for beating the drum that sent him to his death? Isn't it ridiculous to think that a mouse ever could forgive anyone for such perfidy?But still, here are the words Despereaux Tilling spoke to his father. He said, "I forgive you, Pa."And he said those words because he sensed it was the only way to save his own heart, to stop it from breaking in two. Despereaux, reader, spoke those words to save himself.”

“Yes, our Father has a plan, Ciminae,” he said. “But he leaves it up to his children to accept his will. It is their agency. He cannot force his will upon them. If he did, he would cease to be God. They . . . we must choose for ourselves to accept his will with unbreakable faith in our Father. That is when the Father moves us to do his will.” (The Spirit. From Book 2, "Worlds Without End: Aftermath," coming September 1, 2012)”