"I know this is your hand now,' she tells him. "Roland would have never touched me like that." Connor smiles, and Risa takes a moment to look down at the shark on his wrist. It holds no fear for her now, because the shark has been tamed by the soul of a boy. No- the soul of a man."

"We'll never be ready. So I guess that means we're as ready as we'll ever be."

"They all think medicine should be magic, and they become mad at me when it's not."

"Hope can be bruised and battered. It can be forced underground and even rendered unconscious, but hope cannot be killed."

"Their fate rested entirely on me. I could save them by telling the truth. I could destroy them by lying. No one should have that much power."

"I suppose even a simple slogan can be twisted into whatever shape we want, like a balloon animal-we can even make it loop back around on itself, becoming a noose. In the end, the measure of who we are can be seen in the shapes of our balloon animals."

"There is nothing to fear but fear itself," the captain announces from the helm, "and the occasional man-eating monster."

"How many kids are in the Graveyard?""A bunch.""Who sends your supplies?""George Washington. Or is it Abraham Lincoln? I forget.""How often do you receive new arrivals?""About as often as you beat your wife."

"I was asking if unwinding kills you, or if it leaves you alive somehow. C'mon-it's not like we haven't thought about it." (...)What do you think, Connor?" asks Hayden. "What happens to your soul when you get unwound?"Who says I even got one?"For the sake of argument, let's say you do."Who says I want an argument?"

"On a hairpin turn, above the dead forest, on no day in particular, a white Toyota crashed into a black Mercedes, for a moment blending into a blur of gray."

"He will only do the wrong thing when it's the right thing to do.."

"Which side was I on? There was no time to search for answers. All I could do now was ride on a werewolf's back, toward a destiny as hidden as the dark side of the moon."

"This is not going to be easy. I'm good at being bad, but I'm bad at being good. I don't know the first thing about good deeds."

"Griping is for those without a plan of action..."

"I'd rather be partly great than entirely useless."

"The accountant lingers at his children's doorway a moment more, listening to the easy rhythm of their breathing, and something cold moves through him, like the passage of a ghost - but he know that's not it. It's more like the portent of a future. A future that must never come to pass......and for the first time, he gives rise to a thought that is silently echoed in millions of homes that night. My God... what have we done?"

"Heaven might shine bright, but so do flames."

"Dreams can twist your emotions like no reality can."

"The way I see it, the impossible happens all the time; but we're so good at taking it for granted, we forget it was once impossible."

"Today he failed to change the world. As for tomorrow, who can tell?"

"It was easier to deal with Tennyson when he was fighting me; but having him on my side was frightening, because now I didn't know who the enemy was."

"On my fifteenth birthday, I came to realize that the expression spoiled rotten meant exactly that. We kids were the apples of our parents' eyes, and I, for one, was rotting from inside out."

"Walls don't fall without effort."

"When you drop a pebble into a pond, ripples spread out, changing all the water in the pool. The ripples hit the shore and rebound, bumping into one another, breaking each other apart. In some small way, the pond is never the same again."

"They will find whatever button will make you dance, and dance you will, no matter how hideous the tune."

"Whether consciousness is implanted in us by something divine, or whether it is created by the efforts of our brains, the end result is the same. We are."

"I can't help what I have any more than you can help what you don't."

"Hayden shouts, "To the new Teen Uprising!"

"But laugh, laugh, laugh, because if you ever stop laughing, it might just tear you apart."

"Mooooon! said the Ogre. "Tranquility". Then he pointed at the full moon. "Neil Armstrong walked in a sea of Tranquility. Then he added, "It's made of cheese. But you have to take off the plastic before you put it on a burger.Mickey sighed."What's his story? the wraith asked."He's chocolate, Mikey said."

"Once in a while our school has half days, and the teachers spend the afternoon 'in service,' which I think must be a group therapy for having to deal with us."

"I begin to wonder if David was like me. Seeing monsters everywhere and realizing there aren't enough slingshots in the world to get rid of them."

"I'm against solutions that are worse than the problem. Like old women who want their hair dyed the color of shoe polish to hide the gray."

"I came running down the stairs that morning, like it was Christmas. My parents were already up. In my family, presents never waited; they were there upon waking. Our family has a problem with what they called delayed gratification. We want what we want when we want it, and we always want it now."

"How can you pass laws about things that nobody knows?""They do it all the time," says Hayden. "That's what law is: educated guesses at right and wrong."

"He's a conundrum- and there's still a piece missing from the puzzle." Whatever that piece was, there was a part of me telling me not to get involved- that it was too much to handle. That you shouldn't go out on a limb unless you're absolutely sure the limb can support your weight."

"We're this big melting pot, but someone turned up the heat too high, and the stew started to burn. Gangs, crime, fights, and fear are now a regular part of our local stew."

"How do you judge the brightness of a light when you're the source? A spotlight can never see the shadows it casts."

"Makes sense, the earth is quick to consume the flesh of things that ain't natural."

"Everything feels right with the world......and the sad thing is that I know it's a dream. I know it must soon end, and when it does I will be thrust awake into a place where either I'm broken, or the world is broken."

"When he touches a wall the ooze grows thicker, drawn to his and as if he's become a gravity well for the darkness - and it occurs to me that the dark must be in love with the light. Yet one must always kill the other."

"How easy is murder when one calls it by a different name? How much easier is it for the conscience to condone "reaping than "killing-and when one knows that death isn't the end, does it stop the killing hand for fear of retribution, or does it simply make it easier to kill, because, if life continues, how can murder be murder at all?"

"You should never apologize for existing, Lev. Not even to all those people out there who wish you didn't."

"One thing yo learn when you've lived as long as I have-people aren't all good, and people aren't all bad. We move in and out of darkness and light all of our lives. Right now, I'm pleased to be in the light."

"It was at that moment he realized that his spirit was truly human once more. For he no longer remembered how to be alone without being lonely."

"Maybe we're standing like coins on the edge?"Allie considered this. "Meaning?""Meaning, we might be able to shake things up a little, and find a way to come up heads.""Or tails," suggested."

"We move in and out of darkness and light all our lives. Right now I'm pleased to be in the light."

"We are, however, creatures of containment. We want all things in life packed into boxes that we can label. But just because we have the ability to label it, doesn't mean we really know what's in the box.It's kind of religion. It gives us comfort to believe we have defined something that is, by its very nature, indefinable. As to whether or not we've gotten it right, well, it's all a matter of faith."

"We're roughage," Tyger said. "If we don't cause a little intestinal distress, no one knows we're there."

"Does a sick society get so used to its illness that it can't remember being well? what if the memory is too dangerous for the people who like things the way they are?"