"I was running from my own thoughts as much as anything. I simply wanted to untangle myself from the web I had touched. A single, sticky, quivering strand of it was all I needed to warn me away. I did not want to think about people. I wanted the trees, the scents and colors, the shifting shadows of the wood, which spoke a language I understood. I wished I could simply disappear in it, live like a bird or a fox through the winter, and leave the things I had glimpsed to resolve themselves without me."

"“The Riddle Master himself lost the key to his own riddles one day,” he said in his deep, reed-pure voice, “and he found it again at the bottom of his heart.”"

"The small red eyes regarded him, unblinking. “What would you give me for all the wisdom of the world?” “Nothing.” He turned back to his work. “I have heard you know the answers to every riddle save one. That will be the one I need answering.”"

"Wisdom never learned silence, and it is most annoying when least wanted."

"Water has its moods, flowing or still; it can lure you like a lover, or look as bleak as a broken heart."

"Men see what they are most afraid of."

"He kissed her anyway, lightly on the cheek, before she turned to get her coat, thinking how long he had known her and how little he knew her and how little he knew of how much or little there was in her to know."

"What concern of mine are your affairs? Or Coren’s? What kind of peace would there be in me or in my house if I took interest in the wars and feuds that you weave in the courts below? I do not understand such things. I understand only what lies within my walls."

"“You fought for your freedom and won a different kind of prison. I will fight for mine—” “You can’t fight me,” Tearle reminded him harshly. “I know.” In the placid light, his face looked chilled and very weary. “But I can die.”"

"I do not want to choose which one of you I must love or hate. Here, I am free to do neither. I want no part of your bitterness."

"Look, I learned from your uncle that when the universe turns out to be insane, the wise man embraces insanity."

"How many members of the fleshbound masses do you think will listen to him? He’s making sense, and they don’t respond to that."

"“This is coercion,” Bruce thundered. The patrolman smiled. “No, sir,” he said. “This is Texas.”"

"In most Life Situations, the truth is irrelevant. Once in a great while, however, it’s the only thing you've got."

"A belief in the purposeful complexity of Fate is always more comforting than random, straightforward facts. This may be why Mother preferred to believe in Atlantis and UFOs rather than in virtually everything else."

"Upon finding his quarry, he would learn what he could, make an evaluation, and act accordingly. Then he would tell his superiors whatever they wanted to hear, just as he always had."

"Nowhere in the world can you find a wider variety of empty calories than at any American convenience store."

"Death is meaningless unless it happens to someone you know."

"No one had ever come for him... not his mom, not his dad, not his brother, not a dozen people who he'd called his friends back in his town on the coast, not a one of them had ever come looking for him, trying to get him back. They'd just let him go. That was the difference. But this castoff cripple-hand civvy girl had come all the way in. Ocho scowled down at her limp body. See what loyalty gets you? See?"

"Disarm to farm."

"Politics is ugly. Never doubt what small men will do for great power."

"They say in the military that a good battle plan can last as long as five minutes in real fighting. After that, it comes down to if the general is favored by fate and the spirits."

"Nature has become something new. It is ours now, truly. And if our creation devours us, how poetic will that be?"

"If you act like a servant, you will die like a dog."

"She does not know how little anyone cares to separate wheat from chaff, when all anyone wants to do is burn a field."

"You're saying that you yoked the world to your patented grains and seeds, happily enslaved us all—and now you finally realize that you are dragging us all to hell."

"All life produces waste. The act of living produces costs, hazards and disposal questions, and so the (Environment) Ministry has found itself in the center of all life, mitigating, guiding and policing the detritus of the average person along with investigating the infractions of the greedy and short-sighted, the ones who wish to make quick profits and trade on others’ lives for it."

"The symbol for the Environment Ministry is the eye of a tortoise, for the long view—the understanding that nothing comes cheap or quickly without a hidden cost."

"Laws are a fine thing on paper, but painful when no bribery can ease their bind."

"If you bargain when they squeeze your balls, they will only squeeze again."

"Laws are confusing documents. They get in the way of justice."

"Nothing is certain—that is the first lesson."

"Sex and hypocrisy. They go together like coffee and cream."

"A desert's a stupid place to put a river."

"At first, when California started winning its water lawsuits and shutting off cities, the displaced people just followed the water—right to California. It took a little while before the bureaucrats realized what was going on, but finally someone with a sharp pencil did the math and realized that taking in people along with their water didn't solve a water shortage."

"Every time he makes plans for his future, he seems to fail. Every time he reaches forward, the world leans against him, pressing him down."

"We write dust epitaphs for our vanquished enemies and watch them blow away in the desert wind."

"An untrampled scorpion troubles no one."

"Food should come from the place of its origin, and stay there. It shouldn’t spend its time crisscrossing the globe for the sake of profit. We went down that path once, and it brought us to ruin."

"Knowledge is simply a terrible ocean we must cross, and hope that wisdom lies on the other side."

"I love and admire the filmmaker Tarkovsky and believe him to be one of the greatest of all time. My admiration for Fellini is limitless. But I also feel that Tarkovsky began to make Tarkovsky films and that Fellini began to make Fellini films."

"Tarkovsky is the greatest of them all. He moves with such naturalness in the room of dreams. He doesn't explain. What should he explain anyhow? He is a spectator, capable of staging his visions in the most unwieldy but, in a way, the most willing of media. All my life I have hammered on the doors of the rooms in which he moves so naturally. Only a few times have I managed to creep inside. Most of my conscious efforts have ended in embarrassing failure..."

"The film needs to be slower and duller at the start so that the viewers who walked into the wrong theatre have time to leave before the main action starts"

"I am only interested in the views of two people: one is called Bresson and one called Bergman."

"Perhaps the meaning of all human activity lies in the artistic consciousness, in the pointless and selfless creative act? Perhaps our capacity to create is evidence that we ourselves were created in the image and likeness of God?"

"My function is to make whoever sees my films aware of his need to love and to give his love, and aware the beauty is summoning him."

"What nobody seems to understand is that love can only be one-sided, that no other love exists, that in any other form it is not love. If it involves less than total giving, it is not love. It is impotent; for the moment it is nothing."

"Art must must carry man's craving for the ideal, must be an expression of his reaching out towards it; that art must give man hope and faith. And the more hopeless the world in the artist's version, the more clearly perhaps must we see the ideal that stands in opposition — otherwise life becomes impossible! Art symbolises the meaning of our existence."