"I loved the different voices all singing one song, the various tones and qualities, the passing lifts of feeling, rising up and going out forever. Old Man Profet, who was a different man on Sunday, used to draw out the notes at the ends of verses so he could listen to himself, and in fact it sounded pretty."

"I don’t much care for all this talk of God washing away all my dirt. I like a bit of grit around the edges. It gives me character and does a passable job of faking depth, from a distance."

"We live in deeds not years In thoughts not breaths In feelings not figures on a dial. We should count time by heart throbs. He most lives who thinks most, feels noblest, acts the best."

"There is no night porter wandering about in King's. The authorities pay you the compliment, ugly gate-crasher, of treating you as a grown-up. And since we are not grown-up you and I, we will perform our midnight frolics as the inmates burn the midnight oil."

"I can’t take back the past, Nadya. Not even we Unicorns can do that. But I’ll be damned if someone else is going to control our future. I’ve been away for too long, and I will always regret not being there for the Rourakin. But I have returned, and I am not leaving again."

"In life, there are dreary, empty days and there are exciting, full days. You will experience both, for you cannot choose one above the other. May your full days be many."

"Her fatigue was gone; she felt vital and strong, like a tree coming back to life in the springtime, vibrant with sap, ready to put out buds and then blossoms."

"People and things would continue to exist in a world where I did not, and no one would ever think of me. And, if that was the case, then what was the point of existing in the first place?"

"Somehow however just knowing that I could fully expect unhappiness to return – if not predictably then nevertheless reliably – was strangely liberating. The point was that even chaos had a structure a beginning and eventually an end. It was possible to live through it. I’d been doing as much for twenty years."

"I crave the sweet surrender of sleep and my dreams' uncensored communication: no tiresome small talk, sucking up to impress, or tiptoeing around charged topics. Dreams are the naked truth; get ready for it."

"I'm not sure this will make sense to you but I felt as though I'd turned around to look in a different direction so that I no longer faced backward toward the past but forward toward the future. And now the question confronting me was this: What would the future be."