"For our part, when we feel, we evaporate; ah, we breatheourselves out and away; with each new heartfirewe give off a fainter scent. True, someone may tell us:you're in my blood, this room, Spring itselfis filled with you . . . To what end? He can't hold us,we vanish within him and around him."

"Amanda choked on a sob. She looked like she didn’t know what to do. For the first time, Stacey realized this woman was a human being, and sometimes she felt lost."

"What draws me in is that a trip is a leap in the dark. It's like a metaphor for life. You set off from home, and in the classic travel book, you go to an unknown place. You discover a different world, and you discover yourself."

"In my head this cruel unspeakable truth: that we battled and we cursed and we spilled each other’s blood, we relished our taste of hell and strangled heaven’s love."

"Most kids don't give a hoot in hell for brains; they go a penny a pound, and the kid with the high I.Q. Who can't play baseball or at least come in third in the local circle jerk is everybody's fifth wheel."

"If a woman makes a unilateral decision to bring pregnancy to term, and the biological father does not, and cannot, share in this decision, he should not be liable for 21 years of support... Autonomous women making independent decisions about their lives should not expect men to finance their choice."

"I have a vision of a Galaxy overrun by mankind from Core to rim. Of four hundred billion stars each enslaved to the rhythm of Earth's day, Earth's year. I have a vision of a trillion planets pulsing to the beat of a human heart."

"Life isn't a lazy cruise on some endless, calm, and temperate sea. Life is a raging ocean with swells and tidal waves that wreck and sink your boat. Life is a series of storms―overcast skies, fierce winds, and pelting rain. You were meant to be immersed in it all―first to float, then swim, and eventually to walk on water."