...real teenage boys aren't like characters in the books you read. They smell funny and are obsessed with video games and say dumb things. They're still learning, just like you.

Fear can force obedience, but it can never transform a heart.

Is that love, do you think?" he asks, sounding genuinely curious. "Being crazy about someone no matter how much they hurt you?

I love you. I want to do everything with you. I want to marry you and have kids with you and get old with you. And then I want to die the day before you do, so I never have to live without you.

Because the part of me that remembers what it was like all those lifetimes ago still cares for you .. loves you.

The welfare of the people in particular has always been the alibi of tyrants.

I didn't want to be treated like a 'star.' I fought it constantly, and I think I was rude.

I would never recruit a player who yells at his teammates, disrespected his high school coach, or scores 33 points a game and his team goes 10-10.

Freedom is not procured by a full enjoyment of what is desired, but by controlling the desire.

The (post) structuralist temper requires too great a depersonalization of the writing/speaking subject. Writing becomes plagiarism; speaking becomes quoting. Meanwhile, we do write, we do speak.

In its Roman-era setting, for example, Christianity was so different that critics of the time referred to it as a "superstition" (meaning a bogus or dangerous religion).

Infinity is a fathomless gulf, into which all things vanish.

Either you capture the mystery of things or you reveal the mystery. Everything else is just information.

I have found that the richest people I know are also the nicest.

The belief that youth is the happiest time of life is founded on fallacy. The happiest person is the person who thinks the most interesting thoughts, and we grow happier as we grow older.