“Except. What is normal at any given time? We change just as the seasons change, and each spring brings new growth. So nothing is ever quite the same.”

“One doesn't lose a self, like a pair of gloves or a pine. We learn and change, or we harden into stone.”

“Angry men with pointy things sent to secure a foreign city are pretty much alike anywhere. That's what I've heard. So far nothing's convinced me different.”

“Memory warps time, as it does the sights and sounds and smells of reality; for what shapes it is emotion, which can twist what seems clear, just as the surface of a pond seems to bend the stick thrust into the water.”

“Everyone is an idiot," I stated. "Except me.”

“So let me end with the wish that you find the same kind of happyiness, and laughter, and love, that I have found, and that you have the wisdon to make them last.”

“Why is it the songs all end with the good people winning, but in life they don't?"They don't make songs when the good lose," I muttered. "They make war chants against the bad. So there won't be any songs for us.”