“...all the thousands of God's children who have flung themselves, stupid and glorious, over and over, into the best and worst of things, loving whom they should not, seizing what they must not, running where they cannot, falling where there is no one to catch them - how this serves the betterment or edification of the species is not clear; people do it regardless. People have always done it.”

“And, like poor Phaedra, we fall in love not with who we want to fall in love with, but with one who moves us, and sometimes it is the last person we should fall in love with. Our involuntary choice is not always the right one, and sometimes it is actually the worst one, hence our suffering. And then, of course, there is the completely different situation of the loving people where, over the years, the love they once felt for each other fades and they can't go on. They feel their love dying, but are unable to bring it back to life.”

“What good I thought I could do, all alone, against thousands of years of mistrust and the power of a Demonlord, I cannot now imagine: but such are the dreams of youth, too gloriously stupid to realise what cannot be done. And without those dreams, how should we ever accomplish the impossible?”

“I’m standing on the edge of some crazy cliff. What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff—I mean if they’re running and they don’t look where they’re going I have to come out from somewhere and catch them. That’s all I’d do all day. I’d just be the catcher in the rye and all.”

“People who work in an environment where doing their best is recognized have a better chance of feeling good about their work.”

“Gabe was referring to people like Lou who were competitive. Ambitious people, with their eye on the prize instead of the task at hand. People who wanted to be the best for all the wrong reasons and who'd take almost any path to get there. Being the best was only slightly better than being in the middle, which was equal to being the worst. All were merely a state of being. It was how a person felt in that state and why that was the important thing.Gabe wanted to explain to Lou that people like him were always looking at what the other person was doing, always looking to achieve more and greater things. Always wanting to be better. And the entire point of Gabe's telling Lou Suffern about people like Lou Suffern was to warn him that people who constantly looked over their shoulders often bumped into things.Paths are so much clearer when people stop looking at what everyone else is doing and instead concentrate on themselves.”