“When something ought to be true then it proves to be a very powerful truth.”

“Well, but you two are dancing around in your iridescent little downpour, whooping and stomping as sane people ought to do when they encounter a thing so miraculous as water.”

“But there is something about human beings that too often makes our love for the world look very much like hatred for it.”

“People talk about how wonderful the world seems to children, and that's true enough. But children think they will grow into it and understand it, and I know very well that I will not, and would not if I had a dozen lives.”

“So perhaps the very idea of explanation is an error of anthropomorphism when it is applied to things that do not involve human intention.”

“It is possible to know the great truths without feeling the truth of them.”

“There was something that charmed her in the fact that her brother, the one true worldling in the whole tribe of Boughtons, seemed to be asking her for advice, or for wisdom, standing there in the sunlight with the wind hushing in the dusty lilacs of their childhood and laundry swaying on the lines where their school clothes used to hang.”