“Reach beyond the stars; read between the stripes.”

“Why (on Earth) would you want to be a would-be? Anyone who knows how to spell rose can be a romantic. Any Jesus freak with a hand grenade can change the world.”

“There is no pain but to genuinely hurt a friend.”

“humility is beyond our reach. if it were a product of reaching, we would instinctively be proud of reaching it. it is a gift.”

“When we contemplate the whole globe as one great dewdrop, striped and dotted with continents and islands, flying through space with other stars all singing and shining together as one, the whole universe appears as an infinite storm of beauty.”

“What exactly was the difference? He wondered to himself. And who decided which people wore the striped pajamas and which people wore the uniforms?”

“There are seven windows in the Queen's bedroom in the Citadel that is the center of the City that is on the lake island called the Hub in the middle of the world.Two of the seven windows face the tower stones and are dark; two overlook inner courtyards; two face the complex lanes that wind between the high, blank-faced mansions of the Protectorate; and the seventh, facing the steep Street of the Birdsellers and, beyond, a crack in the ring of the mountains across the lake, is always filled at night with stars. When wind speaks in the mountains, it whispers in this window, and makes the fine brown bed hangings dance.”