“If cats looked like frogs we’d realize what nasty, cruel little bastards they are. Style. That’s what people remember.”

“Children are gifts. They are not ours for the breaking. They are ours for the making.”

“A good writer knew when not to write. Anybody could type. Not that I was a good typist; also I couldn’t spell and I didn’t know grammar. But I knew when not to write. It was like fucking. You had to rest the godhead now and then.”

“I can’t understand why people use religion to hurt each other when there’s already so much pain in the world.”

“Moral beauty existed as clearly as any other form of beauty and perhaps that was where we could find the God who was so vividly, and sometimes bizarrely, described in our noisy religious explanations. It was an intriguing thought, as it meant that a concert could be a spiritual experience, a secular painting a religious icon, a beguiling face a passing angel.”

“Boy you really missed the boat. I’ll make it simple, so’s even fuckin you can understand. Papa God growed us up till we could wear long pants; then he licensed his name to dollar bills, left some car keys on the table, and got the fuck outta town”. Water rushes to his eye-holes. “Don’t be lookin up at no sky for help. Look down here, at us twisted dreamers”. He takes hold of my shoulders, spins me around, and punches me towards the mirror on the wall. “You’re the God. Take responsibility. Exercise your power”

“I wish you could stop wasting your life to fulfill other people’s dreams.”

“Computers are like Old Testament gods; lots of rules and no mercy.”

“You look disappointed to see me, Zach,” Macey teased. “Don’t you like my jacket?”

“It is better to waste one’s gold than to waste one’s time, for gold can be acquired from a mine, sold, gifted, or stored in a bank. Time has no master and no shape. No rock can contain it, and nobody can own it. Time is the breath of the Goddess, the rhythm of her chest, the pulse of her beating heart.”

“The soul, they say, is divine and the flesh is iniquity. But I am a musician and I ask this – without the wood and the strings of the violin, where would the sonata find form?”

“Alex es tan adicto a la tinta como en su día lo fue a mis besos. Lástima que yo no fuera para todo la vida.”

“Dimitri’s voice snapped my attention back to him. “That’s Adrian Ivashkov.” He said the name the same way everyone else did. “Yeah, I know.””This is the second time I’ve seen you with him.””Yeah,” I replied glibly. “We hang out sometimes.”Dimitri arched an eyebrow, then jerked his head back toward where we’d come from. “You hang out in his room a lot?”Several retorts popped into my head, and then a golden one took precedence. “What happens between him and me is none of your business.” I managed a tone very similar to the one he’d used on me when making a similar comment about him and Tasha. “Actually, as long as you’re at the Academy, what you do is my business.””Not my personal life. You don’t have any say in that.”

“Misfortunes make us wise”