"Humans, in order to rise above the animals, had learned how to convert themselves into nothing more than organs or limbs or even disposable fingernails and hair of a larger metaphorical organism."

"I'll be dead and you'll think about this day and wonder which of us was more the slave, you or me!"

"What difference does it make, whether we keep our silence because [they] force us or because we're afraid they might force us?"

"He isn't insane, he's simply as trapped in his life as I am in mine. That makes us friends."

"Out of respect for custom he treats me as if all women were equally worthless. He gives custom more respect than he gives me."

"We can wash people in the water all we want, but we can never wash their parents out of their hearts."

"Today, I saw a spark of decency. Let's blow on that spark and give it fuel."

"We all choose our own teachers, don't we? I wonder if our choice of teacher shows anything about what our lives will be."

"Most of the things people say they remember they only imagine anyways."

"I believe in everything that seems true to me right now. I just refuse to be surprised when some of those things I believe in now turn out to be false later."

"I don't mind dying before you do. In fact, I rather prefer it that way."

"Wishful thinking gives false gods to people who hunger for gods, but those who yearn for a world with no gods are no less likely to fall victim to their own wishful thinking."

"Sometimes those who care for the whole community must act in a way that harms the individual. For a good man it never becomes easy and he avoids it when he can; but when people need him to be harsh, he will be harsh indeed, and he won't shrink from it, he'll do it with his own hand and let it be known what he does."

"Haven't you ever seen a 3-year-old when he makes a foolish blunder? He looks at whatever child or adult is nearby and screams at him "Look at what you made me do!" That's the moral universe that [they] always lived in."

"What cannot be healed has been healed. What was lost forever has been found. Therefore let that which cannot be forgiven be forgiven."

"He hated the way they thought. He hated the way they didn't think. It was hard to imagine which of them he hated more."

"Religion isn't always pretty. Especially viewed from the outside, by an unbeliever."

"You're the only one that I would be glad to be close to forever, because all your secrets are bright and good and I love you for them."

"May the day when you need courage never come. Even as she said it, though, she knew the day would come."

"That's what survival means, for me. I thought it was a matter of staying alive, but it isn't. Nobody lives forever anyway. It's how you're remembered. It's what your children thought of you, what they think of you after you're dead. That's survival."

"Frozen, right? But to others, it looks like you're calm as could be. That's why some of the others tease you so mercilessly sometimes. They think you're made of stone, and they want to break in and touch the human feelings. They just don't know that when you seem most stony, that's when you're the most frightened and breakable."

"It is the essence of dignity to pretend to desire what you cannot prevent."

"How short life is for fools."

"Sometimes it felt to him as though he's spent most of his life traveling, and never quite got to anywhere that mattered. Then again, that might be as good a description of what life was supposed to be as anyone ever thought of. The only real destination was death, and our lives consisted of finding the most circuitous and pleasant path to get there."

"This is serious, and you gotta keep your mind open in case an idea comes along—you want there to be some room for it to fit in."

"The dreamers always seem to think their dream is worth the price that other people will pay. They also delude themselves that they will control whatever evil they use to try to bring about their dream."

"“A man like that thinks that fear can win loyalty.” “Plenty of masters with a lash who can testify it works.” “Don’t win loyalty, just obedience, and only while the lash is in the room.”"

"“Don’t talk to me like you understand my sins.” “Don’t talk to me like you know what I do and do not understand.” Alvin chuckled grimly. “Oh, that mouth you’ve got.” “You can’t answer what I said, so you’re going to talk about my saying it.”"

"Knowing something may be a terrible burden to bear, but it holds no danger to them as aren't afraid of truth."

"Every terrible thing in the world was caused by a whole combination of things. But everybody wanted to narrow it down to one cause—and not even the real one. Much better to have one cause—one person to punish. Then the unbearable could be borne."

"“Hey, you’re getting to be almost worth how much it costs to feed you.” “Good thing, ’cause I got no plan to eat less.”"

"“The woman is the subtlest beast in the garden,” said Papa Moose, “now that snakes can’t talk.”"

"Folks always seemed to think that as long as they didn't know about something bad, it wasn't happening, so whoever told them actually caused it to be true."

"Don't lie to me! Don't seem so normal when I know you have cut yourself off from me in your heart! If you can put on our affectionate closeness like a mask, then I'll never be able to take joy in it again."

"Just because you live every waking moment with dreams of controlling other people doesn't mean the rest of us do."

"The barrier was only in my mind — which is true of this barrier as well. The more firmly I try to cross the barrier, the more firmly I'm rejected. Well, maybe it's the intention to cross the boundary that pushes me away."

"I acted like a human male. When I act like a human male it doesn't make me less human, it just makes me less female."

"Wasting our time? This is a waste of time, to live in peace and plenty with my wife and children? May I waste the rest of my life, then."

"Maybe what we really want is for our children to be the dominant ones! Maybe I'm trying to see my own ambitions fulfilled in them, and that would be wrong, so I should be content with what they are."

"Maybe he's growing up. Or maybe he just needed the right circumstances to discover the best in himself."

"I do matter, and despising me was the gravest error of their lives."

"Doesn't love show its face when it satisfies the need of the loved one, for the loved one's sake alone?"

"I interpreted all you did as weakness — but I should have known that it was wisdom and strength, freely shared with all of us, even the ones who don't deserve it."

"You take responsibility for us all. Without ever waiting to be told. So do all good people. That's what it means to be a good person."

"Show him who I am, so he will pity me instead of fearing me. And then we can turn pity into compassion, and compassion into understanding, and understanding into affection, and affection into love, and love into life, the life of our children, the life of the new self we will become together."

"To face death, that's nothing much. But to feel really stupid when you die, well, that would be insufferable."

"Physically plain people are perfectly able to see physical beauty in others, while people who are morally maimed are blind to goodness and decency. They honestly think it doesn't exist. Oh, they know it exists all right. They just never know which people have it."

"The others are even more likely to obey their god. Which is? It dangles between their legs."