“Eagles are extinct," grumbled Morpurgo. "Perhaps they should have attacked the sky. It betrayed them.”

“Writing, I'm convinced, should be a subversive activity - frowned on by the authorities - and not one cooed over and praised beyond common sense by some teacher.”

“I loved almost everything about being a teacher, but I was an unusual teacher.”

“So many important things pass quickly without being understood at the time. So many powerful moments are buried beneath the absurd”

“It was as if they had climbed the last hill in creation.”

“As Ummon and the other Masters teach, it explains why the giraffe evolved a long neck but never why the other animals did not. It explains why humankind evolved to intelligence, but not why the tree near the front gate refused to.”

“In such seconds of decision entire futures are made”

“Who are you, Hockenberry, to thwart Fate and defy the Will of the Gods?I am me, Thomas Hockenberry. I am fed up with these power-addled thugs who call themselves gods.”

“I loved you backward and forward in time. I loved you beyond boundaries of time and space.”

“The whole planet reeks of mysticism without revelation.”

“... a comment with the idle arrogance common of such nobodies who have just come into a small bit of power.”