It doesn't matter how many they kill," I told him. "And it's not awesome-it's wrong." "Then why do you talk about them all the time?" asked Max. "Because wrong is interesting.

Feelings aren't good or bad. They're just weak or strong. Love, for example, is weak: someone loves you, you love them back, you're happy for a while, and then it fades away. But if one of those lovers betrays the other, then you have a real emotion - then you have something powerful, something that leaves a mark you'll never be rid of. Betrayal is the most delicious of all, but it takes a while to set it up, and fear can be just as intense if you know what you're doing.

There are some things more important than ourselves - more important than the limits of the present, and the whims of the now. There is a future to build and protect. And if we're going to make that future as reality, we have to stop fighting among ourselves. We have to end dissent whenever we find it. We have to trust one another again.

It's like . . . time is flowing backward. We're caveman archeologists in the ruins of the future.

Happiness is the most natural thing in the world when you have it, and the slowest, strangest, most impossible thing when you don't.

I simply felt alone, one leaf sitting miles away from a giant, communal pile.

I can't imagine you not saying a word," said Marcus."I think you'd go crazy first.