“I think a song that’s got something to say. I’m not much on gimmicks. I never have been because they don’t last. But I like a song that tells a story and has some meat to it, you know, that means something.”

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.

The love of reading can be contagious.

Jason glanced at the creature. It remained the same distance away as before, still as a statue. “What do you want?” Jason asked. No answer. “Are you the thing that followed Tark?

There was a show in which these scientists shared the secrets of the world’s oldest living people, people still functioning past 100 years-old.

Faith isn’t knowledge, Rachel. Faith is a tool. Faith keeps us going until we get the knowledge. Faith keeps us striving until we reach the consequences of our most important decisions.

….there is a difference between hearing and listening. You can’t always help what you hear. But you can control what holds your interest, what you choose to dwell on.

Ew, sicko. I was practicing Edomic.” “Sure you were,” Jason said. “You’re just too embarrassed to admit you were playing hide-and-seek all alone. Rachel hiding, nobody seeking.

Seth put his ear against the door. “I can’t hear anything.” “There are probably ten of them patiently waiting on the far side, ready to pounce.” Brownies are shrimps.

You mean that people who continue virtuous in an old-fashioned way must inevitably suffer in times like these?

Culture being a pursuit of our total perfection by means of getting to know, on all the matters which most concern us, the best which has been thought and said in the world.

If one were searching for the best means to efface and kill in a whole nation the discipline of self-respect, the feeling for what is elevated, he could do no better than take the American newspapers.

Ancestors do not mean so much. The rebel who succeeds generally makes it easier for the posterity that follows him; so these descendants are usually contented and smug and soft. Rebels are made from life, not ancestors.

The meanest thing in the world is the devil.

Meanness is more in half-doing than in omitting acts of generosity.

Where envy reigns virtue can’t exist, and generosity doesn’t go with meanness.

You shall love peace as a means to new wars – and the short peace more than the long.