Still, you tend to believe what you always believed, think what you always thought, expect what you always expected

We are the clay, and you are Michelangelo. And we will be your masterpiece.

Then the door flew open and Mr. Faulks told us to head over to the gym. I thought that was really smart. Get all of us in one place so the aliens didn't have to waste a lot of ammunition.

I was a slave to something he believed to be silly and superstitious: the idea that all life was worth defending and that nothing justified surrender to the forces of destruction.

The beautiful wooden board on a stand in my father's study. The gleaming ivory pieces. The stern king. The haughty queen. The noble knight. The pious bishop. And the game itself, the way each piece contributed its individual power to the whole. It was simple. It was complex. It was savage; it was elegant. It was a dance; it was a war. It was finite and eternal. It was life.

A man lies upon the floor, spreads his arms, and transforms himself into a ship of a thousand sails.

She hated him and loved him, longed for him and loathed him, and cursed herself for feeling anything at all