“Lord, if what I'm doing is wrong, then by all means strike me down. Otherwise set me free.”

“...the Statue of Liberty's got this invitation: 'Give me your tired, your poor, your reeking homeless--''Huddled masses,' said Ira. 'Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.'...Okay, fine. So like everybody in the old countries says, 'Hey, I'm a huddled mass,' and they all wanna come over.”

“Your friend Mikey knew what my touch could do, but he didn’t tell me. He turned me into a murderer. Worse than a murderer.”“I think,” said Nick, “they call that manslaughter or wrongful death, don’t they? I mean, when it’s an accident or out of ignorance, or something.”Clarence turned to Nick, studying him with his Everlost eye. “You’re a lot smarter than you were back in the cage,” Clarence said. “You look better too. Back then you were a thing, now you’re almost a person.”“Thanks . . . but ‘almost’ is still ‘almost.’”“Yeah, well, we’re all almost something.”

“How can you pass laws about things that nobody knows?""They do it all the time," says Hayden. "That's what law is: educated guesses at right and wrong.”

“How can you do the right thing when you can't figure out what that is? When all you have before you are choices in various shades of wrong?”

“I believe that we have free will. I believe we get the chance to make choices in our lives. Not everything is set in stone from the moment we're born. We choose our destiny, our ultimate fate. But I also think that we don't realize the choices we've made until after we make them. We're racing down a freeway, only to realize we've missed all the exits, and the only direction we can go is dead ahead.”

“You think you want to know the secrets of the universe. You think you want to see the way things all fit together. You believe in your heart of hearts that enlightenment will save the world and set you free. Maybe it will. But the path to enlightenment is rarely a pleasant one.”