“Knowing you’re worthless doesn’t give you value any more than knowing you are a captive sets you free.”

“Another world. Another life. And for me it was much longer than five measly years. A world with more darkness and less hope than I care to remember. Bleak and starless, full of diseased men. It's inside them there. In some ways it makes it worse. You don't know who's diseased and who isn't. You don't know when you've become a Scab.”

“Women could be quite crafty, he knew that much. His father said it often. Smarter than men, too, most of the time. You had to know your way around if you wanted to fall in love with a woman.”

“Do you know what hope and fear have in common?... They both hold great power. But that power is dependent on both fear and hope together. Think about it. Without the fear of something terrible, you cannot have the hope that it won't happen, you see? Without having hope for something wonderful, you can't have any fear of losing it. They work together, the two most powerful forces we possess.”

“I sell ideas. Actually, if you think about it, everything is really no more than idea. The past is nothing more than a memory, which is one kind of idea. The future is still a hope, another kind of idea. The present is fleeting and becomes a memory before you can put your hands on it. All ideas. I sell ideas.”

“You should know something, Miriam.... God changed our futures yesterday. There's no other explanation for what happened. And it wasn't the first God. If you ever need hlep, you might want to try the second God.”

“Not evil. Not any more evil than the colored trees are good.Evil and good reside in the heart, not in trees and water.”