"The opposite. I love only life. But life can only continue in the face of death."

"...But when it comes to human beings, the only type of cause that matters is final cause, the purpose. What a person had in mind. Once you understand what people really want, you can't hate them anymore. You can fear them, but you can't hate them, because you can always find the same desires in your own heart."

Only one rabbi dared to expect of us such a perfect balance that we could preserve the law and still forgive the deviation. So, of course, we killed him.

"I thought you said you likd this kid."
"If the buggers get him, they'll make me look like his favorite uncle."
"All right. We're saving the world, after all. Take him."

The great forces of history were real, after a fashion. But when you examined them closely, those great forces always came down to the dreams and hungers and judgments of individuals. The choices they made were real. They mattered.

Everybody dies. What matters is what you do between now and when it happens to you.

"I think it's impossible to really understand somebody, what they want, what they believe, and not love them the way they love themselves."

"I've watched through his eyes, I've listened through his ears, and I tell you he's the one."

Oops, I thought. Oops is an all-purpose word standing for every bit of profanity, blasphemy, and pornographic and scatological execration I could think of.

"All the stories are fictions. What matters is which fiction you believe."

"Religion is tied to the deepest feelings people have. The love that arises from that stewing pot is the sweetest and strongest, but the hate is the hottest, and the anger is the most violent."

And it came into Hooch's mind that when both parties are lying and they both know the other party's lying, it comes powerful close to being the same thing as telling the truth.

"This emotion I'm feeling now, this is love, right?"
"I don't know. Is it a longing? Is it a giddy stupid happiness just because you're with me?"
"Yes," she said.
"That's influenza," said Miro. "Watch for nausea or diarrhea within a few hours."

"I've watched through his eyes, I've listened through his ears, and I tell you he's the one. Or at least as close as we're going to get."

Well, I'm your man. I'm the bloody bastard you wanted when you had me spawned. I'm your tool, and what difference does it make if I hate the part of me that you most need? What difference does it make that when the little serpents killed me in the game, I agreed with them, and was glad.

Forget it, Mazer. I don't care if I pass your test, I don't care if I follow your rules. If you can cheat, so can I. I won't let you beat me unfairly - I'll beat you unfairly first.

"If human beings are all monsters, why should I sacrifice anything for them?"
"Because they are beautiful monsters..., And when they live in a network of peace and hope, when they trust the world and their deepest hungers are fulfilled, then within that system, that delicate web, there is joy. That is what we live for, to bind the monsters together, to murder their fear and give birth to their beauty."

"Isn't that the sweetest little well-balanced undergraduate-level philosophy of life."

"Doesn't it make you wonder about your own sexual identity, not to mention your sanity, that the two women you love are, respectively, a virtual woman existing only in the transient ansible connections between computers and a woman whose soul is in fact that of a man who is the husband of your mother?"

"I went back through some of the tapes. I can't help it. I like the kid. I think we're going to screw him up."
"Of course we are. It's our job. We're the wicked witch. We promise gingerbread, but we eat the little bastards alive."

"I am your enemy, the first one you've ever had who was smarter than you. There is no teacher but the enemy. No one but the enemy will ever tell you what the enemy is going to do. No one but the enemy will ever teach you how to destroy and conquer. Only the enemy shows you where you are weak. Only the enemy tells you where he is strong. And the rules of the game are what you can do to him and what you can stop him from doing to you. I am your enemy from now on. From now on, I am your teacher."

"I thought: If I could just make a good family, if I could just learn to be to other children, their whole lives, what Andrew was, coming so late into ours, then that would mean more in the long run, it would be a finer accomplishment than anything I could ever do with my mind or my hands.

"If they were servants by nature," said Colon, " you wouldn't have to beat them to get them to obey. It's a brave man who beats a little child. They'll no doubt write songs about your courage."

And they were gnawed with in by the grief of knowing that this greatest gift of all gifts was forever out of their reach.

Quentin had never been beaten up. He had, however, seen the Rodney King tape.

Sometimes it was very nice to have money and lawyers. Why ordinary people didn't strangle arrogant bureaucrats more often, Quentin didn't know.

Quentin immediately quoted: "'Whenever I hear you saying, Rise and shine, rise and shine, it makes me think how lucky dead people are!'"

...but that doesn't give them the right to decide the meaning of my life as if I were some dream. I decide the meaning. If my life is a dream then it's my dream, I'm the dreamer.

..."the story the oversoul tells me fits all the facts that I see. Your story, in which I'm endlessly deceived, can also explain all those facts. I have no way of knowing that your story is not true-but you have no way of knowing that my story isn't true. So I will choose the one that I love. I will choose the one that, if it's true, makes this reality one worth living in. I'll act as if the life I hope for is real life,and the life that disgusts me-your life, your view of life-is the lie."

...all of a sudden they both felt their arms pretty near wrenched right out of their sockets and then they were dragged around, grabbed by the collars, and smacked together so hard their noses bled and they saw stars.
      "You're lucky I took me a vow of nonviolence," said Mike Fink, "or you'd be suffering some pain right now."

"The wise are not wise because they make no mistakes. They are wise because they correct their mistakes as soon as they recognize them."

"Perhaps it's impossible to wear an identity without becoming what you pretend to be."

"Good people can't out-think evil, cause evil thinks of things good folks can't think of."

"Then I'll tell the truth. We're allowed to do that in emergencies. We can't plan for everything, you know."

"... Christians have been expecting the imminent end of the world for millennia."
"But it keeps not ending."
"So far, so good."

"I'm right here. This is who I really am. I'm not pretending."

"Trying to shock nuns is not much sport. There is no trophy."

"We could live forever, if we were willing to be stupid the whole time."
"Surely you're not saying that God had to choose between long life and intelligence for human beings!"
"It's there in your own Bible, Carlotta. Two trees — knowledge and life. You eat of the tree of knowledge, and you will surely die. You eat of the tree of life, and you remain a child in the garden forever, undying."

"And then he thought: Is this how idiots rationalize their stupidity to themselves?"

"Your mother surrounds you every moment," she said. "I know, because I feel her love for you in my own arms, around you now."

"... if he was a good man, how could he leave me? So he must not be a good man. But if he isn't good, then why does it hurt so much to lose him?"

"Like running the hurdles. Work so hard, jump over every one, fast, high enough but no higher, because you can't afford to hang in the air. And then, when the race is over, you're dripping with sweat, either they beat you or you beat them ... and then a couple of guys come out and move the hurdles out of the way. Turns out they were nothing. All that work to jump over them, but now they're gone."

"Isn't that what it means to be civilized? That you can wait to get what you want?"

He luxuriated in the sound of high language well spoken.

Analyzing things was fine, but good reflexes could save your life.

These other kids didn't know love when they saw it.

Know, think, choose, do.

'I'm not stupid!' In Bean's experience, that was a sentence never uttered except to prove its own inaccuracy.

Or at least she hoped it with such fervor that it felt like certainty.