Here is a truth, a truth by which to live: there is hope. There is always hope. If we choose to abandon it, our souls will turn to ash and blow away.

On more than one occasion David, in his urge to explore the darker corners of the bookshelves, had found himself wearing strands of spider silk in his face and hair, causing the web's creator to scuttle into a corner and crouch balefully, lost in thoughts of arachnoid revenge.

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.

He became merely the broken statue of a beast, now without another's fear to animate it.

We are not meant to know the time or the nature of our deaths (for all of us secretly hope that we may be immortal).

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

This life is filled with threats and danger, David. We face those that we have to face, and there will be times when we must make the choice to act for the greater good, even at risk to ourselves, but we do not lay down our lives needlessly. Each of us has only one life to live, and one life to give. There is no glory in throwing it away where there is no hope.