Evil people naturally assume that you will use that power exactly as they would use it.

With life. Rooter says that life is how God gives purpose to the universe.

I think that most of us, anyway, read these stories that we know are not "true" because we're hungry for another kind of truth: the mythic truth about human nature in general, the particular truth about those life-communities that define our own identity, and the most specific truth of all: our own self-story. Fiction, because it is not about someone who lived in the real world, always has the possibility of being about oneself. --From the Introduction

The wise are not wise because they make no mistakes. They are wise because they correct their mistakes as soon as they recognize them.

I've lived too long with pain. I won't know who I am without it

When you really know somebody you can’t hate them. Or maybe it’s just that you can’t really know them until you stop hating them.

Whether he likes it or not, [he] cannot remain incognito forever. He has outraged too many wise men and pleased too many fools to hide behind his too-appropriate order to assume leadership of the forces of stupidity he has marshalled, or his enemies will unmask him in order to better understand the disease that has produced such a warped and twisted mind.