"Arin, you’re not listening. You’re not thinking clearly.”“You’re right. I haven’t been thinking clearly, not for a long time. But I understand now.” Arin pushed his tiles away. His winning hand scattered out of line. “You have changed, Kestrel. I don’t know who you are anymore. And I don’t want to."

"Society may no longer define marriage in the only way marriage has ever been defined in the annals of recorded history. Many societies allowed polygamy, many allowed child marriages, some allowed marriage within families; but none, in thousands of years, defined marriage as the union of people of the same sex."

"That he will haunt the footsteps of his enemy after death is the one revenge which a dying man can promise himself; and if men had power thus to avenge themselves the earth would be peopled with phantoms. ('Eveline's Visitant')."

"Prot: I'm not tired.Brewer: I am.Prot: Perhaps you're getting too much sleep. All your beings seem to sleep a lot. Is that because it's so awful to be awake?"

"My feelings about my mortality are less selfish than they used to be. I used to affect a cavalier attitude to death now I see it from my son's perspective."

"People left a lot of things behind when they went in the water. Their clothes, their stuff, their makeup, their fixed-up hair, their voices, their hearing, their sight—at least as the normally experienced them."

"I pulled the homemade jail knife out that I had in my hand, Porkie pulled out the very sharp lockback knife that he had concealed up his sleeve. We told the warden and nurse to sit on the floor, and if they did as we told them then no one would get hurt."

"Let me dream so I can shape the world, let me dream so I can make others dream as well, but do not let me dream my days away; lest I sleep my years away too."