It's not life or death, the labyrinth. Suffering. Doing wrong and having wrong things happen to you.

People, I thought, wanted security. They couldn't bear the idea of death being a big black nothing, couldn't bear the thought of their loved ones not existing, and couldn't even imagine themselves not existing. I finally decided that people believed in an afterlife because they couldn't bear not to.

The real heroes anyway aren't the people doing things; the real heroes are the people NOTICING things, paying attention. The guy who invented the smallpox vaccine didn't actually invent anything. He just noticed that people with cowpox didn't get smallpox.

Dying is the last thing I would EVER do!

How about I call you when I finish this?” “But you don’t even have my phone number,” he said. “I strongly suspect you wrote it in the book.” He broke out into that goofy smile. “A nd you say we don’t know each other.

She had the kind of fingers you want to interlace with your own.

How are the eyes?' 'Oh, excellent,' he said. 'I mean, they're not in my head is the only problem.