"Its hardness and solidity had been an odd kind of comfort. Do not wish for anything. Be and endure. The Old African had learned that enduring was power too, and just as he had been drawn to the boulder, so the slaves, after a while, were drawn to him."

"Man has no Body distinct from his soul; for that called Body is a portion of a Soul discerned by the five senses, the chief inlets of Soul in this age."

"I don't know that movies are important. But I know that stories are important. Movies may disappear. They've only been around, for God's sake, for the last hundred years... I think that it's the need to tell stories, and that people need to be told stories. It's the old sitting around the fire, you know."

"So tell me, since it makes no factual difference to you and you can't prove the question either way, which story do you prefer? Which is the better story, the story with animals or the story without animals?"

"When you look at Van Gogh, Jesus, Buddha, Mother Teresa from a 'fiscal' perspective, they were homeless. When you look at them from a humanityperspective, they were priceless."

"Consciousness cannot be accounted for in physical terms. For consciousness is absolutely fundamental. It cannot be accounted for in terms of anything else."

"You should give it to Max, Liesel. See if you can leave it on the bedside table, like all the other things.' Liesel watched him as if he'd gone insane. 'How, though?' Lightly, he tapped her skull with his knuckles. 'Memorize it. Then write it down for him."

"It is not systematic education which somehow molds society, but, on the contrary, society which, according to its particular structure, shapes education in relation to the ends and interests of those who control the power in that society."