Because if their own parents didn't care enough about them to keep them, who would want them in Heaven?

The Admiral's using us," he says to the kids around him. "Don't you see that?" Most of the kids just shrug, but Hayden's there, and he never misses an opportunity to add his peculiar wisdom to a situation. "I'd rather be used whole than in pieces," Hayden says.

We weren't going anywhere," Nick said with a smile. He was trying to sound charming, but instead wound up sounding heavily sedated.

Statistically speaking, there's a better chance that some part of me will go on to greatness somewhere in the world. I'd rather be partly great than entirely useless.

I'm against solutions that are worse than the problem. Like old women who want their hair dyed the color of shoe polish to hide the gray.

Sometimes we make our alliances not by the shape and color of our flesh but by the convictions of our heart.

You think you want to know the secrets of the universe. You think you want to see the way things all fit together. You believe in your heart of hearts that enlightenment will save the world and set you free. Maybe it will. But the path to enlightenment is rarely a pleasant one.