“Now I know... we have at least two friends!... Cillie von Leiden and the hunchback... not bad in our situation... or, come right down to it, no matter where and when, peace, dead calm, wars, convulsions... so many vaginas, stomachs, cocks, snouts, and flies you don't know what to do with them... shovelsful!... but hearts?... very rare!”

“so many vaginas, stomachs, cocks, snouts, and flies you don't know what to do with them ... shovelsfull! ... but hearts? ... very rare! in the last five hundred million years too many cocks and gastric tubes to count ... but hearts? ... on your fingers! ...”

“We are so used to releasing words, we don't know what to do with them if they stay. No matter how many times we let them go, they come back. The words that matter always stay.”

“Stephen Hawking… found it tantalizing that we could not remember the future. But remembering the future is child's play for me now. I know what will become of my helpless, trusting babies because they are grown-ups now. I know how my closest friends will end up because so many of them are retired or dead now… To Stephen Hawking and all others younger than myself I say, 'Be patient. Your future will come to you and lie down at your feet like a dog who knows and loves you no matter what you are.”

“I don't know what happens to our consciousness when we're unwound," says Connor. "I don't even know when that consciousness starts. But I do know this." He pauses to make sure all of them are listening. "We have a right to our lives!"The kids go wild."We have a right to choose what happens to our bodies!"The cheers reach fever pitch."We deserve a world where both those things are possible— and it's our job to help make that world.”

“I have come to accept the feeling of not knowing where I am going. And I have trained myself to love it. Because it is only when we are suspended in mid-air with no landing in sight, that we force our wings to unravel and alas begin our flight. And as we fly, we still may not know where we are going to. But the miracle is in the unfolding of the wings. You may not know where you're going, but you know that so long as you spread your wings, the winds will carry you.”