“Sometimes a catastrophe is simply a course correction.”

“If you know something bad is coming, can't you plan to avoid it or try to do something differently?" said Charles.Probably", said the Cartographer, "but then the good events would have no flavor. The joy you find in life is paid for by suffering that comes later, just as sometimes, the suffering is redeemed by a joy unexpected. That's the trade that makes a life worth living.”

“Astraeus,' Aven called out. 'God of the four winds and friend to sailors. Say a little prayer when you look at him, so he will give us what we need to keep our course.'A little prayer?' said Jack. 'To a constellation?'To what it represents,' said Aven.But I don't believe in what it represents,' said Jack.Prayers aren't for the deity,' said Aven. 'They're for you, to recommit yourself to what you believe.'Can't you do that without praying to a dead Greek god?'Sure,' said Aven. 'But how often would anyone do that, if not in prayer?”

“All the various time travel devices used by Verne and Bert were stored in the repository, Poe explained, including the ones that had never quite worked as they were meant to. There was one that resembled a blue police box from London—“Stolen by a doctor with delusions of grandeur,” said Poe—one that was simply a large, transparent sphere—“Created by a scientist with green skin and too much ego,” said Verne—and one that was rather ordinary by comparison.“This one looks like an automobile,” John said admiringly, “with wings.”“The doors open that way for a reason,” Verne explained, “we just never figured out what it was. The inventor of this particular model tried integrating his designs into a car, an airplane, and even a steam engine train. He was running a crackpot laboratory in the Arizona desert, and he never realized that it was not his inventions themselves, but his proximity to some sort of temporal fluctuation in the local topography, that allowed them to work.” “What happened to him?” asked Jack.“He’d get the machines up to one hundred and six miles per hour,” said Bert, “and then he’d run out of fuel and promptly get arrested by whatever constabulary had been chasing him. The sad part was that Jules figured out if he’d just gone two miles an hour faster, he’d likely have been successful in his attempt.”

“If you really want to do something, no one can stop you. But if you really don’t want to do something, no one can help you”

“Live deliberately. Decide: are you the kind of person things happen to, or the kind of person who makes things happen?”

“I believe that every one of us has something that's very unique to us specifically. Something unique enough that no one else might really ever understand it — not our parents, or teachers, or best friends, or siblings.It’s our point of view.Our point of view is what makes us unique, because no one else — no one else — has your particular combination of thoughts, and dreams, and hopes, and desires, and ambitions and memories, and experiences. No one. And I believe that every once in a while, the Universe opens itself up to you and you alone, and shows you something that no one else is going to understand.  And you have to decide in that moment how much you believe in what you have seen — even if everyone else in the world tells you you're wrong.”