“…only in the surrender of the light could the darkness prevail.”

“Fantasy is escapist, and that is its glory. If a soldier is imprisioned by the enemy, don’t we consider it his duty to escape?. . .If we value the freedom of mind and soul, if we’re partisans of liberty, then it’s our plain duty to escape, and to take as many people with us as we can!”

“if something is there, you can only see it with your eyes open, but if it isn’t there, you can see it just as well with your eyes closed. That’s why imaginary things are often easier to see than real ones.”

“Confidence is like a dragon where, for every head cut off, two more heads grow back.”

“I feel ill,” [Howl] announced. “I’m going to bed, where I may die.”

“I ended my first book with the words ‘no answer.’ I know now, Lord, why you utter no answer. You are yourself the answer. Before your face questions die away. What other answer would suffice? Only words, words; to be led out to battle against other words.”

“I’m not afraid of dying. I’m afraid I’ll never get a chance to live!”

“I swear, my dear. Sometimes our conversations remind me of a broken sword.”She raised an eyebrow.”Sharp as hell,” Lightsong said, “but lacking a point.”

“Run first,’ Shane said. ‘Mourn later.’It was the perfect motto for Morganville.”

“I have met some highly intelligent believers, but history has no record to say that [s]he knew or understood the mind of god. Yet this is precisely the qualification which the godly must claim—so modestly and so humbly—to possess. It is time to withdraw our ‘respect’ from such fantastic claims, all of them aimed at the exertion of power over other humans in the real and material world.”

“May my heart be kind, my mind fierce, and my spirit brave.”

“The treacherous are ever distrustful.”

“Stories of imagination tend to upset those without one.”

“Fantasy is a necessary ingredient in living, it’s a way of looking at life through the wrong end of a telescope.”