“An unread book does nobody any good. Stories happen in the mind of a reader, not among symbols printed on a page.”

Our young people will learn more about the cult of militarism in this short and accurate book by Joel Andreas than they might learn in their first twelve years of schooling.

A hero sacrifices for the greater good. A hero is true to his or her conscience. In short, heroism means doing the right thing regardless of the consequences. Although any person could fit that description, very few do. Choose this day to be one of them.” (Beyonders – A World Without Heroes)

Most pleasures are best as a seasoning, not the main course. p. 374

There are no insect eggs in my food.” Mrs. White reiterated. You should use that in your advertising,” Nate suggested.

Hooves clomping over the whitewashed planks, Doren sprinted along the boardwalk after Rondus, a portly satyr with butterscotch fur and horns that curved away from each other. Puffing hard, Rondus cut through a gazebo and started down the stairs to the field.

For a wound to heal, you have to clean it out. Again, and again, and again. And this cleaning process stings. The cleaning of a wound hurts. Yes. Healing takes so much work.

The Holy Spirit is profoundly committed to restoring the first commandment to first place in our lives.

Running toward danger is foolhardy. … But so is closing your eyes to it. Many perils become less dangerous once you understand their potential hazards.

…even misplaced faith can help us gain knowledge. We try to be smart about where we put our faith and we adjust as we learn more.

Then she imagined Hal giving a rousing eulogy at her funeral explaining how Kendra’s death was a beautiful sacrifice allowing the noble zombies to live on delighting future generations by mindlessly trying to eat them. With her luck it could totally happen.

For each of us destiny is a blend of potential, circumstances, and choices.

We all posses different gifts and abilities. How we use those gifts determines who we are.

You look tired,” Rachel told Jason. “I wish I could jog and sleep at the same time.” “Can’t you?” Ferrin asked, joining them at the little cascade. “I always imagined that you could sleep rolling down a mountainside in a barrel.” “I probably could today,” Jason conceded.

I am so old, I entered engineering school with a slide rule. And I left engineering school with a calculator. I can still use a slide rule but it’s not a skill you especially need anymore.

I don’t know how you’re standing here. Yet you haven’t broken. Not where it matters. Having come this far, I’m not sure you can be broken.

Don’t let the brownies bite.

I’m a lifelong movie addict, and one of my favorite projects is making replica props and costumes.

From earliest times, humans – explorers and thinkers – have wanted to figure out the shape of their world.

Are stories a heeded warning, or merely an entertainment? Each story in the collection tries to wrestle with these questions.

Did you see The Never-Ending Story? That’s one kick-ass dragon. It’s basically a giant puppy dragon.

The ideas always have to be in service of the story. And that’s what Scott and the writers did – they weren’t trying to beat you over the head with an idea; they had a story they wanted to tell, and they had ideas

The urge to create a fictional narrative is a mysterious one, and when an idea comes, the writer’s sense of what a story wants to be is only vaguely visible through the penumbra of inspiration.

We [me and friends] like to have surprising stories, but the dynamic and the friendship is the same.

Once a poet calls his myth a myth, he prevents the reader from treating it as a reality; we use the word “myth” only for stories we ourselves cannot believe.