...it was imaginative people who tended to lie. Lying required making stuff up, and only imaginative people were good at that.

I believe in those whom I love and trust. All else is foolishness. This god is as empty as his church. His followers choose to attribute all of their good fortune to him, but when he ignores their pleas or leaves them to suffer, they say only that he ignores their pleas or leaves them to suffer, they say only that he is beyond their understanding and abandon themselves to his will. What kind of god is that?

You had evil inside you, and you indulged it. Men will always indulge it.

This world is full of broken things: broken hearts, broken promises, broken people.

You mean they killed her?" asked David. They ate her," said Brother Number One. "With porridge. That's what 'ran away and was never seen again' means in these parts. It means 'eaten.'" Um and what about 'happily ever after'?" asked David, a little uncertainly. "What does that mean?" Eaten quickly," said Brother Number One.

The US dollar is our currency but your problem.

I think the act of reading imbues the reader with a sensitivity toward the outside world that people who don't read can sometimes lack. I know it seems like a contradiction in terms; after all reading is such a solitary, internalizing act that it appears to represent a disengagement from day-to-day life. But reading, and particularly the reading of fiction, encourages us to view the world in new and challenging ways...It allows us to inhabit the consciousness of another which is a precursor to empathy, and empathy is, for me, one of the marks of a decent human being.