“How do you choose between your kids and your parents? I feel like we're all just a bunch of vikings, moving around so we can pillage and burn, make a better living. Some choose their kids, some their parents, and some both. Some people just choose themselves,”

“Could we possibly be from the place we want to be? Were we from the place we died rather than the place we were born? Are our aspirations our home? Maybe we are from that place to which we're bound, and that's why desire hurts so much, this longing to find a place to rest, to get home. We're not from the past, but the future.”

“Obviously, the more kids who are vaccinated, the better our country is protected and the less likely it is that any child will die from a disease. Some parents, however, aren't willing to risk the very rare side effects of vaccines, so they choose to skip the shots. Their children benefit from herd immunity (the protection of all the vaccinated kids around them) without risking the vaccines themselves. Is this selfish? Perhaps. But as parents you have to decide. Are you supposed to make decisions that are good for the country as a whole? Or do you base your decision on what's best for your own child as an individual? Can we fault parents for putting their own child's health ahead of the other kids' around him?”

“Her whisper was, Lyman thought, like a Marlin ripping all the line out of a fishing rod.”

“Are we defined by where we want to go or where we've been?”

“I’ve come to the end of another book alive. At times like this I’m always at a loss for words.”

“You know . . . a lot of kids at school hate their parents. Some of them got hit. And some of them got caught in the middle of wrong lives. Some of them were trophies for their parents to show the neighbors like ribbons or gold stars. And some of them just wanted to drink in peace.”