“He could just look at people and listen to them and suddenly he'd know things about them.”

“She had always thought that if only people could communicate mind-to-mind, eliminating the ambiguities of language, then understanding would be perfect and there'd be no more needless conflicts. Instead she had discovered that rather than magnifying differences between people, language might just as easily soften them, minimize them, smooth things over so that people could get along even though they really didn't understand each other. The illusion of comprehension allowed people to think they were more alike than they really were. Maybe language was better.”

“When you really know somebody you can’t hate them. Or maybe it’s just that you can’t really know them until you stop hating them.”

“People above you, they never want to share power with you. Why you look to them? They give you nothing. People below you, you give them hope, you give them respect, they give you power, cause they don't think they have any, so they don't mind giving it up.”

“The disadvantage with people is that you can't put bookmarks in them and set them aside till you want them again.”

“Alvin smiled back, and kissed her. "People talk about fools counting chickens before they hatch. That's nothing. We name them.”

“Of course, he didn't know anything about these Indonesians, or why they would have been there at this moment to save his life, but the fact that they had guns and weren't firing them at him implied that for the moment, at least, they were his dearest friends.”