Parents always make their worst mistakes with their oldest children. That's when parents know the least and care the most, so they're more likely to be wrong and also more likely to insist that they're right.

I also remembered that you were beautiful." "Memory does play tricks on us." "No. Your face is the same, but I don't remember what beautiful means anymore.

But if you caught my informant,' said Achilles, 'why in the world would Chamrajnagar—or Graff, if it was him—launch the shuttle anyway? Was catching me doing something naughty so important they’d risk a shuttle and it’s crew just to catch me? I find that quite… flattering. Sort of like winning the Nobel Prize for scariest villain.

I've got a pretty good idea what children are, and we're not children. Children can lose sometimes, and nobody cares.

To have a choice at all is to be free - even when the choice is between two terrible things.

Quim," she said, "don't ever try to teach me about good and evil. I've been there, and you've seen nothing but a map.

Early to bed and early to rise," Mazer intoned, "makes a man stupid and blind in the eyes.