"The whole world believes that performing good deeds is dharma (religion). Performing good deeds is known as laukik dharma (worldly religion, that religion which does not lead us to self-realization but binds merit karmas)."

"At its most fundamental, language is an act of shared attention, and without the fundamentally human willingness to listen to what another person is saying, language would not work."

"I continue to be surprised by judgmental native stereotypes and apathy, but if I wasn't that would mean I'd become accustomed and tolerant. I don't want to stop being surprised. I just want them to stop."

"I should have bailed. That little voice had my back. That little voice is older than I am. It's older than the oldest person who ever lived. I should have listened to that voice."

"I don't like to think of it as 'stolen'. They have no proof that I didn't plan on giving it back.'You're kidding, right?'He shrugged. 'You have no proof either.'She squinted back at him. 'Were you planning on giving it back?'Maybe.'An orange light blinked on in the corner of Cinder's vision-her cyborg programming picking up on the lie."

"Keep in mind that in the whole long tradition of storytelling, from Greek myths through Shakespeare through King Arthur and Robin Hood, this whole notion that you can't tell stories about certain characters because someone else owns them is a very modern one - and to my mind, a very strange one."

"And in that moment, I felt my own ignorance spread suddenly out behind me like a pair of wings, and every single thing I didn’t know was a feather on those wings. I could feel them tugging at the air, restless to be airborne."