“For it had become evident to me that I was a great rebel. I fancied that I had suddenly risen above all the errors and stupidities and mistakes of modern society--there are enough of them to rise above, I admit--and that I had taken my place in the ranks of those who held up their heads and squared their shoulders and marched into the future. In the modern world, people are always holding up their heads and marching into the future, although they haven't the slightest idea what they think the "future" is or could possibly mean. The only future we seem to walk into, in actual fact, is full of bigger and more terrible wars, wars well calculated to knock our upraised heads off those squared shoulders.”

“To my thinking, a great librarian must have a clear head, a strong hand, and, above all, a great heart. And when I look into the future, I am inclined to think that most of the men who achieve this greatness will be women.”

“I was heading off to my new world. But I was taking a part of my past, and the future, along with me for the ride.”

“There seemed to be nothing left in the world, for I felt that Roland had taken with him all my future and Edward all my past.”

“I filled my head with thoughts of the future, of infinite possibly. There's someone out there who will one day find me and fall in love with me and prove that all this waiting actually meant something....”

“I stared at the creased map on my wall, the thin green lineconnecting all the places I had read about. There they were, all thecities of my imaginary future, held together with tape and marker andpins. In six months, a lot had changed. There was no thin green linethat could lead me to my future anymore. Just a girl.”