“I want to be independent. To meet interesting people. ... I just mean new people with clever things to say. Things I've never heard before. I want to be free. Open to whatever adventure comes along and sweeps me off my feet.”

“I heard you're campaigning on my behalf." He walked over to me. "That wouldn't be because you'd miss me too much if I were gone,would it?""Don't be absurd," I scoffed. "I don't condone murder, even for people like you.""People like me,huh?" He cocked an eyebrow. "You mean devilishly handsome, debonair young men who come to sweep rebellious princesses of their feet?""You came to kidnap me, not sweep me off my feet," I said,but he waved his hand at the idea."Semantics.”

“I knew I seemed a fairly unlikely candidate for an adventure into the unknown. And secretly I doubted that I had what it took, whatever it took, to head off alone to a country most people had never heard of. In light of this, my determination to go puzzled me.”

“I never wanted to see half the things I've seen, and I've never seen half the things I wanted to. I don't think wanting comes into it. You'd best go all the same.”

“Billy heard Rosewater say to a psychiatrist, "I think you guys are going to have to come up with a lot of wonderful new lies, or people just aren't going to want to go on living.”

“I guess god simply wants me to meet many wrong people before I meet the right one.”