"A creative writing teacher at San Jose State used to say about clichés: 'Avoid them like the plague.' Then he'd laugh at his own joke. The class laughed along with him, but I always thought clichés got a bum rap. Because, often, they're dead-on. But the aptness of the clichéd saying is overshadowed by the nature of the saying as a cliché."

"Judgment can be acquired only by acute observation by actual experience in the school of life by ceaseless alertness to learn from others by study of the activities of men who have made notable marks by striving to analyze the everyday play of causes and effects by constant study of human nature."

"500. There are paradoxes. If there were no night, we would be deprived of themagnificent image of a starry sky. Thus light deprives us of 'vision,' anddarkness helps us 'see."

"Socrates indeed when he was asked of what country he called himself said 'Of the world' for he considered himself an inhabitant and a citizen of the whole world."

"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."

"The way I tell it, he says to Fitzwilliam, you would think that the blow on the head had improved him. That he actually set out to get it. That every monarch needs a blow on the head, from time to time."