“I’ve asked myself again and again whether it wouldn’t have been better if we hadn’t gone into hiding; if we were dead now and didn’t have to go through this misery, especially so that the others could be spared the burden. But we all shrink from this thought. We still love life, we haven’t yet forgotten the voice of nature, and we keep hoping, hoping for...everything.”
“All that night the wind blew. Simon lay in the dark and listened: to the sirens in the roof, and the stealthy slither of the mat along his floor, and the crying of the pine outside the window. Now and then in the night he work and heard them still.”
“So many things are new to him! The broad streets! The automobiles and buses! However, he is especially interested in two gentlemen he notices on the street.
He says to himself: ‘Really, they are very well dressed. I would like to have some fine clothes, too! I wonder how I can get them?’ ”
“She was so changed in appearance that Mirrim, passing her table just before the evening meal, almost failed to recognize her. Menolly had been worrying that Mirrim was deliberately avoiding her because Menolly had Impressed nine fire lizards, but there was no restraint in Mirrim’s manner.”
“There are a whole lot of religious people in America, including the majority of Democrats. When we abandon the field of religious discourse—when we ignore the debate about what it means to be a good Christian or Muslim or Jew; when we discuss religion only in the negative sense of where or how it should not be practiced, rather than in the positive sense of what it tells us about our obligations toward one another; when we shy away from religious venues and religious broadcasts because we assume that we will be unwelcome—others will fill the vacuum. And those who do are likely to be those with the most insular views of faith, or who cynically use religion to justify partisan ends.”
“I suspected that each of my teammates hoped as fervently as I that Hall had been careful to weed out clients of dubious ability, and would have the means to protect each of us from one another’s shortcomings.”
“But suddenly the world turned sideways. I realized I’d been played with. Zeus, Poseidon, and Hades had been set at each other’s throats by someone else. The master bolt had been in the backpack, and I’d gotten the backpack from . . .”
“Frightened eyes and a fountain looked back at Ammu.
‘D’you know what happens when you hurt people?’ Ammu said. ‘When you hurt people, they begin to love you less. That’s what careless words do. They make people love you a little less.’ ”