“For children love is a feeling; for adults, it is a decision. Children wait to learn if their love is true by seeing how long it lasts; adults make their love true by never wavering from their commitment.”

“...you seemed to be listening to me, not to find out useful information, but to try to catch me in a logical fallacy. This tells us all that you are used to being smarter than your teachers, and that you listen to them in order to catch them making mistakes and prove how smart you are to the other students. This is such a pointless, stupid way of listening to teachers that it is clear you are going to waste months of our time before you finally catch on that the only transaction that matters is a transfer of useful information from adults who possess it to children who do not, and that catching mistakes is a criminal misuse of time.”

“She likes us,” said Umbo. “I know, I could feel it too,” said Rigg. “She’s really glad to have us here. I think she loves us like her own children.” “Whom she murdered and cut up into the stew.” “They were delicious.”

“So that's it?" asked the expendable."Final decision," said Ram. "And it's the right one.""Why do you think so?""Because we live or die, we'll learn something important from jumping into the fold. Thousands of future travelers will either follow us or not. But if we don't make the jump, we'll learn nothing, have no new options.""A lovely speech. It has been sent back to Earth. It will inspire millions.""Shut up," said Ram.”

“The stone loves you. Don't you see it? Hasn't it shown you its love all your life?”

“How did I become the one to make this decision for everyone?”

“Once these two had been joined together in love, or something like love; they had made two babies, and yet, only fifteen years later, the last tie between them was broken now. All lost, all gone. Nothing lasted, nothing. Even this forty-million-year world that the Oversoul had preserved as if in ice, even it would melt before the fire. Permanence was always an illusion, and love was just the disguise that lovers wore to hide the death of their union from each other for a while.”