"It's not his bodythat changesright away.It's somethinginside. He sayshe wants tobe a littleweaker. I don'tunderstand.I say 'thinner?'and he says'no, I wantto be strongerin a differentway.' notbecause of me,but for me."

"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."

"Depression is the most unpleasant thing I have ever experienced. . . . It is that absence of being able to envisage that you will ever be cheerful again. The absence of hope. That very deadened feeling, which is so very different from feeling sad. Sad hurts but it's a healthy feeling. It is a necessary thing to feel. Depression is very different."

"State-sanctioned marriage is a civil contract, period. A contract is not a judgment of moral value. It is a legal agreement between two parties that testifies to a meeting of minds between those consenting entities. It is not a religious act or rite and so has nothing to do with Adam and Eve or Steve or even Harvey."

"So it is said, for him who understands Heavenly joy, life is the working of Heaven; death is the transformation of things. In stillness, he and the yin share a single Virtue; in motion, he and the yang share a single flow."

"For the others, it was still just a tale, like all the tales we told, night by night, tales comical and strange, tales heroic and awe-inspiring, the tales that formed the fabric of our spirits."

"Warlock: Four thousand and fifty-three metric tons of inert rock, metal and organic matter, frozen solid.Quasar: Frozen in what?Drax: Time.Quasar: 'Time', Drax?Drax: Uh-huh. Old, old frozen time.Quasar: Right. And that tastes like what?Drax: Regret."

"The cradle rocks above an abyss, and common sense tells us that our existence is but a brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness. Although the two are identical twins, man, as a rule, views the prenatal abyss with more calm than the one he is heading for."

"In eighty-six years, child, I've learned the world is a far more mysterious place than most people realize and that every moment of life is woven through with meaning."