My great-aunt. . . . said nobody under 18 had any business reading Dickens. . . . She was right.

The important thing is not the finding, it is the seeking, it is the devotion with which one spins the wheel of prayer and scripture, discovering the truth little by little.

Who knows a man's name, holds that man's life in his keeping. Thus to Ged, who had lost faith in himself, Vetch had given him that gift that only a friend can give, the proof of unshaken, unshakeable trust.

Living, being in the world, was a much greater and stranger thing than she had ever dreamed.

And I needed a rock. Something to hold onto, to stand on. Something solid. Because everything was going soft, turning into mush, into marsh, into fog. Fog closing in on all sides. I didn't know where I was at all.

The law of evolution is that the strongest survives!' 'Yes, and the strongest, in the existence of any social species, are those who are most social. In human terms, most ethical...There is no strength to be gained from hurting one another. Only weakness.

The model of modern Western civilization is the virus: the pure bit of information, which turns its environment into endless reproductions of itself.