We didn't make the world. All we have to do is live in it.

It is the responsibility of the living to make meaningful the sacrifices of the dead.

"And you require no answers", Foamfollower was laughing in his gladness, "You are sufficient to every question".

Are you a person—with volition and maybe some stubbornness and at least the capacity if not the actual determination to do something surprising—or are you a tool? A tool just serves its user. It’s only as good as the skill of its user, and it’s not good for anything else. So if you want to accomplish something special—something more than you can do for yourself—you can’t use a tool. You have to use a person and hope the surprises will work in your favor. You have to use something that’s free to not be what you had in mind.

Gradually, the night stumbled as if stunned and wandering aimlessly into an overcast day -- limped through the wilderland of transition as though there were no knowing where the waste of darkness ended and the ashes of light began. The low clouds seemed full of grief -- tense and uneasy with accumulated woe -- and yet affectless, unable to rain, as if the air clenched itself too hard for tears. And through the dawn, Atiaran and Covenant moved heavily, unevenly, like pieces of a broken lament.

I may not yet be as old as dirt, but dirt and I are starting to have an awful lot in common.

It is wrong to ask for more than you give freely. In this way, we come to resemble what we hate.