"The Colonel ran ahead of me, gleeful at his ejection, and I jogged after him, trailing in his wake. I wanted to be one of those people who have streaks to maintain, who scorch the ground with their intensity. But for now, at least I knew such people, and they needed me, just like comets need tails."

"Y'all smoke to enjoy it. I smoke to die."

"You can say a lot of things about Alabama, but you can't say that Alabamans as a people are unduly afraid of deep fryers."

"Is the labyrinth living or dying? Which is he trying to escape—the world or the end of it?"

"And we'll call you...hmmm. Pudge." "Huh?" "Pudge," the Colonel said. "Because you're skinny. It's called irony, Pudge. Heard of it? Now, let's go get some cigarettes and start this year off right."

"At some point, you just pull off the Band-Aid and it hurts, but then it's over and you're relieved."

"The test will measure whether you are an informed, engaged and productive citizen of the world, and it will take place in schools and bars and hospitals and dorm-rooms and in places of worship. You will be tested on first dates, in job interviews, while watching football and while scrolling through your Twitter feed. The test will judge your ability to think about things other than celebrity marriages, whether you'll be easily persuaded by empty political rhetoric and whether you'll be able to place your life and your community in a broader context. The test will last your entire life, and it will be comprised of the millions of decisions that, when taken together, make your life yours. And everything - everything - will be on it."

"It is very sad to me that some people are so intent on leaving their mark on the world that they don't care if that mark is a scar."

"When people have to choose between civilization and warm genitals, they choose warm genitals"

"I really think that reading is just as important as writing when you're trying to be a writer. Because it's the only apprenticeship we have. It's the only way of learning how to write a story."

"So I guess the first thing I would say is: you need to write a story that, unlike my story, has a beginning, a middle and an end. Also the beginning shouldn't involve hating foxes and the end shouldn't involve no one liking you."

"The funny thing about writing is that whether you're doing it well or you're doing it poorly, it looks the exact same. That is actually one of the main ways that writing is different from ballet dancing."

"Hank, before I move forward with this discussion, I should acknowledge that as a child I was an inveterate liar... As opposed to now, when I am a novelist."

"There is no them, there are only facets of us."

"If you are rich, you have to be an idiot not to stay rich. And if you are poor, you have to be really smart to get rich."

"[Twilight] argues that true love will triumph in the end, which may or may not be true, but if it's a lie, it's the most beautiful lie we have."

"'What's the meaning of life?' Other people."

"The fourth way to get a boy to like you is to be yourself. Now, I am contractually obligated as an adult to give that advice, even though it doesn't work. But yeah, be yourself, even though no one has any idea what it means to be yourself. Like whose self would I otherwise be being?"

"Is health care a privilege, or is it a right? If it's a privilege, even if it's a really desirable privilege like indoor plumbing, we need to stop giving health care of any kind to uninsured people who can't pay for it in advance. But... ...I think the reason we continue to treat people who are uninsured is because we don't believe that health care is a privilege. We believe that it is a right. And if it is a right, like life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, it is the responsibility of a government to protect that right."

"The Venn Diagram of guys who don't like smart girls and guys you don't want to date is a circle."

"Now, Hank, obviously you and I are living proof that sometimes a nerd meets another nerd and they fall in nerd-love."

"Good morning Hank. I know what you're thinking. You're thinking: 'My older brother really needs a haircut!' Well, Hank, I've got one thing to say to that. Never!"

"I mean Hank, the movie was great, but the thirty minutes before the movie started was what I love about being a nerd. Because nerds like us are allowed to be unironically enthusiastic about stuff. We don't have to be like, 'Oh yeah that purse is okay' or like, 'Yeah, I like that band's early stuff.' Nerds are allowed to love stuff, like jump-up-and-down-in-the-chair-can't-control-yourself-love it. Hank, when people call people nerds, mostly what they are saying is, 'You like stuff', which is just not a good insult at all, like 'You are too enthusiastic about the miracle of human consciousness'."

"Never go to war with a noun. You will always lose."

"Saying 'I notice you're a nerd' is like saying, 'Hey, I notice that you'd rather be intelligent than be stupid, that you'd rather be thoughtful than be vapid, that you believe that there are things that matter more than the arrest record of Lindsay Lohan. Why is that?' In fact, it seems to me that most contemporary insults are pretty lame. Even 'lame' is kind of lame. Saying 'You're lame' is like saying 'You walk with a limp.' Yeah, whatever, so does 50 Cent, and he's done all right for himself."

"I may not have facts on my side, Hank, but I still think I'm right. That's the American way."

"People die. That’s true in novels, and it’s true in life. Dying is one of the very few things we all do. To deny or ignore the omnipresent reality of death seems to me a disservice to human beings. That said, acknowledging in my novels that death exists does not make me a murderer any more than acknowledging that cancer can be treated makes me an oncologist."

"You never know how much time you'll have."

"There's no such thing as dead languages, only dormant minds."

"Fools talk, cowards are silent, wise men listen."

"Coincidences are the scars of fate."

"Now I know I have already lost you. I have lost everything. Even so, I can't let you go forever and allow you to forget me without letting you know that I don't bear you any grudge, that I knew it from the start, I knew that I was going to lose you and that you would never see in me what I see in you. I want you to know that I loved you from the very first day and that I still love you, now more than ever, even if you don't want me to."

"There are worse prisons than words."

"Wars have no memory, and nobody has the courage to understand them until there are no voices left to tell what happened, until the moment comes when we no longer recognize them and they return, with another face and another name, to devour what they left behind."

"A secret's worth depends on the people from whom it must be kept."

"Few things leave a deeper mark on a reader than the first book that finds its way into his heart. Those first images, the echo of words we think we have left behind, accompany us throughout our lives and sculpt a palace in our memory to which, sooner or later--no matter how many books we read, how many worlds we discover or how much we learn or forget--we will return."

""It's a strange world," I murmured, more to myself than to the other native soul. "The strangest," he agreed."

"I held you in my hand, Wanderer. And you were so beautiful."

""You. Are. Not. Leaving. Me." His eyes blazed — burning brighter than I had ever seen them, blue flames."

"What was it that made this human love so much more desirable to me than the love of my own kind? Was it because it was exclusive and capricious? The souls offered love and acceptance to all. Did I crave a greater challenge? This love was tricky; it had no hard-and-fast rules — it might be given for free, as with Jamie, or earned through time and hard work, as with Ian, or completely and heartbreakingly unattainable, as with Jared. Or was it simply better somehow? Because these humans could hate with so much fury, was the other end of the spectrum that they could love with more heart and zeal and fire?"

"It's not the face, but the expressions on it. It's not the voice, but what you say. It's not how you look in that body, but the things you do with it. You are beautiful.""

"You stupid jackass," Ian said. "Who's got the crush on a worm, bro? You gonna call me stupid?"

"That's just great," someone said under his breath. "We've got a bloody queen mother alien living with us. She could blow into a million new buggers at any moment."

"I am female," I complained. "That 'it' business is really getting on my nerves." [...] "By whose definition?" "How about by yours? In my species, I am the one that bears young. Is that not female enough for you?"

"I was all alone in my head — exactly what I had once wanted. It made me feel lost."

"And it wasn't just ripping, but twisting and pulling in different directions. Because Melanie's heart broke, too, and it was a separate sensation, as if we'd grown another organ to compensate for our twin awarenesses. A double heart for a double mind. Twice the pain."

"This place was truly the highest and the lowest of all worlds — the most beautiful senses, the most exquisite emotions... the most malevolent desires, the darkest deeds. Perhaps it was meant to be so. Perhaps without the lows, the highs could not be reached."

"If there were any way for me to become human for you — no matter what the price was, I would pay it."

"I am a neutral country. I am Switzerland. I refuse to be affected by territorial disputes between mythical creatures."