a technician who uses the term “glitch” is like a Doctor who tells you you’re suffering from a “thingy,” except the doctor won’t tell you to go home and try turning yourself on and off again.

I'd been hurt, and in response I had acted violently, destroying a little of myself each time I did so.

Why is there always one bloke in these boy bands who looks like he came to fix the boiler and somehow got bullied into joining the group?

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.

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

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

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.