“Thenceforth they thought that, rationally concluded, doubt could become an instrument of knowledge.”

“But history is neither watchmaking nor cabinet construction. It is an endeavor toward better understanding.”

“The very names we use to describe ancient ideas or vanished forms of social organization would be quite meaningless if we had not known living men.”

“So I had this problem -- work or starve. So I thought I'd combine the two and decided to become a writer.”

“The man who smiles when things go wrong has thought of someone to blame it on.”

“All at once she could hear the sullen patter of the rain and sense the sigh of the wind behind it. She remembered the sound, because it had rained like that the day Mom was buried, the day they lowered her into that little rectangle of darkness.”

“She was the only one left, and she was real.To be the only one, and to know that you are real - that's sanity, isn't it?But just to be on the safe side, maybe it was best to keep pretending that one was a stuffed figure. Not to move. Never to move. Just to sit here in the tiny room, forever and ever.If she sat there without moving, they wouldn't punish her.If she sat there without moving, they'd know that she was sane, sane, sane.She sat there for quite a long time, and then a fly came buzzing through the bars.It lighted on her hand.If she wanted to, she could reach out and swat the fly.But she didn't swat it.She didn't swat it, and she hoped they were watching, because that proved what sort of a person she really was.Why, she wouldn't even harm a fly...”