Explore Book Quotes

“I think the reason Uncle had originally been so strict with Father was that he thought of Father as his spiritual son. He hoped that Windrider would be everything that Uncle had once wished Black Dog to be. And like any parent with a child, Uncle was hurt and angry when Windrider did not behave as Uncle wanted. But then, with Dragonwings, Uncle came to accept the fact that he was not always right.”

“‘I’m broken, and no one can fix it. I’ve tried. I’m still trying. I can’t love anyone because it’s not fair to anyone who loves me back.’”

“God raises my weakness and gives me courage to endure the worst.”

“It was only by escaping into the desert that Moses and the Jews were able to solidify their identity and reemerge as a social and political force. Jesus spent his forty days in the wilderness, and Mohammed, too, fled Mecca at a time of great peril for a period of retreat. He and just a handful of his most devoted supporters used this period to deepen their bonds, to understand who they were and what they stood for, to let time work its good. Then this little band of believers reemerged to conquer Mecca and the Arabian Peninsula and later, after Mohammed’s death, to defeat the Byzantines and the Persian empire, spreading Islam over vast territories. Around the world every mythology has a hero who retreats, even to Hades itself in the case of Odysseus, to find himself.”

“Once upon a time a man who had become invisible arrived in America.”

“As individuals each of us is extremely isolated, while ... all linked by a prototypical memory. ”

“I know all the twenty-six letters like that through to Z is for Zebra. I know them all well. So not I know everything anyone knows from beginning to end. From the start to the close. Because Z is as far as the alphabet goes.”

“People are fulfilled to the extent that they create their world (which is a human world), and create it with their transforming labor”

“She dismounted, grabbed Enna’s hand so tightly that she drew blood with her fingernails, walked straight into the nearest cottage, and plopped down on a bed. Enna nodded to the startled cottage dwellers. ‘It’s the queen, you see,’ said Enna. ‘She’s going to have a baby in your house. You don’t mind?‘”

“Life was rich with a different kind of urgency.”