“I loved him right away," she said. "Almost on sight. Some things are so obvious when you look at them. And when that happens there isn't any choice.”

“Sometimes Discontent is unknown to the sufferer, a shadowed thing that creeps up from behind. It had been that way for Mary. Of course she knew there were reasons for her unhappiness, there are always reasons. One thinks, I am unhappy, I am discontent, because of this or that. But such thoughts are like a painting of sorrow, not sorrow itself. Then one day it comes, hushed and ferocious, and reasons don’t matter anymore.” - The Outlander by Gil Adamson”

“Here was a man who wore his scars on the outside and held a merry heart within. How much better that was than its opposite.”

“The dwarf and the woman, lucky miscreants, outlanders, errors that should not exist but lived on anyway. (314)”

“when i wake up mornings alone it is more disturbing, when i imagine it could be the living things, that are going out of my life.”

“The wrecked mess of flesh had to hurt like hell and I was just starting to feel a little sympathy for Kujima when some distant corner of my brain sent me a reminder that he’d shot me, beaten me and was about to light me on fire.”

“There is an old Zen saying about seeing the moon's reflection in a pond. If the surface of the pond is agitated and full of ripples, the moon's reflection won't look anything like the moon. That agitation, those ripples, are your constant thoughts and feelings, which disturb your ability to perceive truth. When the pond is perfectly still, however -when your thoughts and feelings withdraw and stay quiet -then you can see the moon's reflection. You can perceive the truth.”