That," he whispered, "is unthinkable." In Mosca’s experience, such statements generally meant that a thing was perfectly thinkable, but that the speaker did not want to think it.

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.

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.

The word 'religion' has acquired a very bad name among those who really love truth, justice, charity. It also exhales the musty odor of sanctimony and falsehood.

Yes, books are dangerous. They should be dangerous - they contain ideas.

He who is not just is severe, he who is not wise is sad.

Why would anyone get married and have babies? That's the dumbest idea I've ever heard in my life. Or the scariest thing I've ever heard in my life.

I never met a girl I didn't meet

Disciple making is not a call for others to come to us to hear the gospel but a command for us to go to others to share the gospel.

But, of course only morons would ever think or speak of themselves as intellectuals. That's why they all look so sad.

They had so much rain in New York that a lot of the cabbies had their first shower in years.

He who understands you is greater kin to you than your own brother. For even your own kindred neither understand you nor know your true worth.

If there is a world here in a hundred years, it's going to be saved by tens of millions of little things.