Everybody knew that books were dangerous. Read the wrong book, it was said, and the words crawled around your brain on black legs and drove you mad, wicked mad.

Tea is the magic key to the vault where my brain is kept.

If wits were pins, the man would be a veritable hedgehog.

Oh, painted smirk of a hopeless dawn, the girl is still wearing her breeches.

I want my chirfugging goose back!

Brand a man as a thief and no one will ever hire him for honest labor - he will be a hardened robber within weeks. The brand does not reveal a person's nature, it shapes it.

You’re a peach full of poison, you know that?" Mosca snapped back, but could not quite keep a hint of admiration from her tone.

I am anything I wish to be. The world cannot choose for me. No, it is for me to choose what the world shall be.

In Mosca’s experience, a ‘long story’ was always a short story someone did not want to tell.

The world is like a broken wrist that healed the wrong way, and will never be the same again.

Well, you will have to do. If you had died along with your mother, I would have taught the cat to read.

It's nice to think that the weirdos get to decide what matters about the past, since it's the weirdos who care the most.

You can never solve a problem with the same kind of thinking that created the problem in the first place.

Your history doesn't need to dictate your destiny

White Fang knew the law well: to oppress the weak and obey the strong.

Elite athletes learn entitlement. They believe they are entitled to have women serve their needs. It's part of being a man. It's the cultural construction of masculinity.

Childhood is the most beautiful of all life's seasons.

I get a lot of unasked for sexual confessions.

I'm retiring the Mos Def name after 2011. I'm actually doing it.

Service is life. No service means, spiritually no life.

I find that in letters you can make things whatever you wish them to be.