The way I see it, the impossible happens all the time; but we're so good at taking it for granted, we forget it was once impossible.

What he's really saying is: Please be a human being. With a life so full of rules and regiments, it's so easy to forget that's what they are. She knows—she sees—how often compassion takes a back seat to expediency.

does a sick society get so used to its illness that it can't remember being well? what if the memory is too dangerous for the people who like things the way they are?

I can't destroy things so beautiful." "Time will destroy them if you don't. Time destroys everything. But if you destroy them, it will mean something.

How can you pass laws about things that nobody knows?" "They do it all the time," says Hayden. "That's what law is: educated guesses at right and wrong.

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.

My grandmother used to say that twisting paths always cross again," he told her. "And whose paths are more twisted than ours?