“Lots of things are more than what they seem in a purely physical sense.”

“The venom," she [Susan] said quietly. "They call it their Kiss.""I guess I can't blame them. It sounds a lot more romantic than 'narcotic drool.”

“Smiling always seems to annoy people more than actually insulting them. Or maybe I just have an annoying smile.”

“Pain isn’t a lot of fun, at least not for most folks, but it is utterly unique to life. Pain — physical, emotional, and otherwise — is the shadow cast by everything you want out of life, the alternative to the result you were hoping for, and the inevitable creator of strength. From the pain of our failures we learn to be better, stronger, greater than what we were before. Pain is there to tell us when we’ve done something badly—it’s a teacher, a guide, one that is always there to both warn us of our limitations and challenge us to overcome them.For something no one likes, pain does us a whole hell of a lot of good.”

“Evil isn’t the real threat to the world. Stupid is just as destructive as Evil, maybe more so, and it’s a hell of a lot more common. What we really need is a crusade against Stupid. That might actually make a difference.”

“Many things are not as they seem: The worst things in life never are.”

“There's been a lot on my mind," I replied."It seems unlikely that your cares will lighten," Queen Mab replied. "Improve your mind.”