“I jerked my chin toward Frost’s body. ‘All that is required for evil to prevail is for good men to do nothing.’Hao said, “Life is not safe. A man might spend his whole time on earth staying safe in a basement, and in the end, he still dies like everyone else.” Half-naked, covered with the same filth we all were, he still gave the impression of being in control of himself and his environment.”
“Man is not satisfied with just being man. He wants to be everything, all creatures, and still remain himself. Man has unfathomable depths to his goodness and his evil, his intelligence and his ignorance--he is a dark region of wells and wishes to drink at them all.'-- O-kolkol”
“He wished to cover her with his body, possess her-for if he could do that, he could pretend to himself that she was safe. Covering her so...he might protect her. Or so he felt, even knowing how senseless the feeling was.”
“By the toll of a billion deaths man has bought his birthright of the earth, and it is his against all comers; it would still be his were the Martians ten times as mighty as they are. For neither do men live nor die in vain.”
“His whole body was completely still, except the wings, which were still fluttering a little, like when someone dies. That's when he finally understood that of all the things the angel had told him, nothing was true. That he wasn't even an angel, just a liar with wings.”
“Billy wanted me to stay a safe distance from the most important person in my life. It turned out that his concern was, in the end, unnecessary. I was all too safe now.”