"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."

"For as long as I care to remember, religion, like the striptease, has always been a display of the power of suggestion. Like the Virgin Birth, it has all too often supported an immaculate deception."

"I believe that in the battle between guns and ideas, ideas will, eventually, win. Because the ideas are invisible, and they linger, and, sometimes, they can even be true. Eppur si muove: and yet it moves."

"Narrative understanding is a large part of the ability to connect with, understand, and have compassion for all of us engaged in learning more about being human."

"The arts that have escaped [uniformity] best are the arts in which the public take no interest. Poetry is an instance of what I mean. We have been able to have fine poetry in England because the public do not read it, and consequently do not influence it."

"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."