“My brother Keith begged to go with us as usual. He'll turn thirteen in a few days - August 14 - and the thought of waiting two more years until he's 15 must seem impossible to him. I understand. Waiting is terrible. Waiting to be older is worse than other kinds of waiting because there's nothing you can do to make it happen faster.”

“Nothing. It just finds you a lot more attractive than it does most Humans. What can you do with a beautiful woman that you can’t do with an ugly one? Nothing. It’s just a matter of preference.”

“He could not tell her that he was angry because she did not love him. Even he could not utter such foolishness. Certainly, he did not love her. He did not love anyone except perhaps Isaac and a very few of his other children. Yet he wanted Anyanwu to be like his many other women and treat him like a god in human form, competing for his attention no matter how repugnant his latest body nor even whether he might be looking for a new body. They knew he took women almost as readily as he took men. Especially, he took women who had already given him what he wanted of them--usually several children. They served him and never thought they might be his next victims. Someone else. Not them.”

“I'm a fifty-three-year-old writer who can remember being a ten-year-old writer and who expects someday to be an eighty-year-old writer.”

“When apparent stability disintegrates,As it must--God is Change--People tend to give inTo fear and depression,To need and greed.When no influence is strong enoughTo unify peopleThey divide.They struggle,One against one,Group against group,For survival, position, power.They remember old hates and generate new ones,The create chaos and nurture it.They kill and kill and kill,Until they are exhausted and destroyed,Until they are conquered by outside forces,Or until one of them becomesA leaderMost will follow,Or a tyrantMost fear.”

“In my years, I have seen that people must be their own gods and make their own good fortune. The bad will come or not come anyway.”

“Beware:At war Or at peace,More people die Of unenlightened self-interestThan of any other disease.”