The nature of humanity, its essence, is to feel another’s pain as one’s own, and to act to take that pain away,. There is a nobility in compassion, a beauty in empathy, a grace in...

If cats could count, they’d start getting nervous around the time they put paid to their fifth life.

Being shot at for years by men of a particular nationality will tend to impact negatively upon one’s view of them.

We all have our routines,” he said softly.”But they must have a purpose and provide an outcome that we can see and take some comfort from, or else they have no use at all. Without...

After all this time, he had hope, and then hope was gone, and he hates himself for giving in to hope. He, who exists only to kill the hopes of others, could not destroy the...

Samuel understood at last why this being hated men and women so much: he hated them because they were so like himself, because the worst of the was mirrored in them. He was the source...

Slow animals always become prey in the end.

You’ve just inherited rudeness. We’ve had to work at it.

He had quite liked the dwarfs. He often had no idea what they were talking about, but for a group of homicidal, class-obsessed small people, they were really rather good fun.

My feelings for Raphael are mine, and mine alone. I loved him, and that is all anyone needs to know. The rest is no business of any man’s.

Once upon a time – for that is how all stories should begin – there was a boy who lost his mother.

We must have taken a wrong turn turning somewhere.””Where, Purgatory?” said Dozy. “We’re in Hell.

It didn’t help when he told David that his mother would always be with him, even if he couldn’t see her. An unseen mother couldn’t go for long walks with you on summer evenings, drawing...

But he was wounded, and tired, and winter was still upon him.

I think the act of reading imbues the reader with a sensitivity toward the outside world that people who don’t read can sometimes lack. I know it seems like a contradiction in terms; after all...

And, in the darkness, David closed his eyes as all that was lost was found again.

We are not meant to know the time or the nature of our deaths (for all of us secretly hope that we may be immortal).

And the Crooked Man heard her dreams, because that was where he wandered. His place was the land of the imagination, the world where stories began. The stories were always looking for a way to...

There’s a difference between living and just surviving. Do something you love, and find someone to love who loves that you love what you do.It is really that simple.And that hard.

You pay by the hour, even if the job only takes five minutes. I don’t do fractions.

What do you believe in?’ asked David.‘I believe in those whom I love and trust. All else is foolishness. This god is as empty as his church. His followers choose to attribute all of their...

Know a man by his metaphors.

Come on,” I said a third time, to the approaching darkness, to the figures that beckoned from within it, to the peace that comes at last to every dead thing.

Misery loved company, but damnation needed it.

daddyand it contained within it the prospect of living and the hope of dying, of endings and beginnings, of love and loss and peace and rage, all wrapped up in two whispered syllables.

It’s a full-time job being homeless. It’s a full-time job being poor.

I believe in those whom I love and trust. All else is foolishness. This god is as empty as his church. His followers choose to attribute all of their good fortune to him, but when...

‎”Sarge, mr. Nurd here is threatening to turn me to jelly.””really?” said Sarge. “what flavor?

You have to understand that only the very worst end up here: the ones whose anger made them kill, and who felt no sorrow or guilt after the act; those so obsessed with themselves that...

When did you get so clever?””When I realized I wasn’t as clever as I thought.

Regrets, Blacksmith, make poor currency. You can’t but back with them what you most desire.

He became merely the broken statue of a beast, now without another’s fear to animate it.

Stories come alive in the telling. Without a human voice to read them aloud, or a pair of wide eyes following them by flashlight beneath a blanket, they had no existence in our world. They...

A demon obsessed with being human is a demon no longer

But don’t they say that all is fair in love and war? I heard that somewhere.””‘They?’ Who are ‘they?'””I don’t know. Just people.””That’s what the victorious claim, not the defeated; the powerful, not the powerless....

The nature of compassion isn’t coming to terms with your own suffering and applying it to others: It’s knowing that other folks around you suffer and, no matter what happens to you, no matter how...

Wickedness never rests easily so, in a way, one might almost feel pity for the wicked, for they are destined to live their lives in fear, in a prison of the heart.

The trick was not to stifle the emotions, but to control them. Love, anger, grief – all were weapons in their way, but they needed to be kept in check.

If there is anything worse than evil, it is nothingness. At least evil has a form, and a voice, and a purpose, however depraved. Perhaps some good can even come out of evil: a terrible...

They were on the side of the angels, even if the angels weren’t entirely sure that this was a good thing.

We lie to protect our children, and in lying we expose them to the greatest of harms

I dream dark dreams. I dream of a figure moving through the forest, of children flying from his path, of young women crying at his coming. I dream of snow and ice, of bare branches...

People who believe in buried gods,’ said Louis.‘Do you believe in buried gods, Detective Walsh?’‘I’m Episcopalian. I believe in everything.

It is a curious fact that small boys are more terrified of their babysitters than small girls are. In part, this is because small girls and babysitters, who are usually slightly larger girls, belong to...

Why did you shoot him?””You weren’t around,” I replied, my teeth gritted in pain. “If you’d been here I’d have shot you instead.

David could tell, by looking at her face as she read, whether or not the story contained in the book was living inside her, and she in it, and he would recall again all that...

These stories were very old, as old as people, and they had survived because they were very powerful indeed. They were the tales that echoed in the head long after the books that contained them...

For in every adult there dwells the child that was, and in every child there lies the adult that will be.

The Detective was different. Not that he wasn’t a good man; Willie had heard enough about him to understand that he was the kind who didn’t like to turn away from another’s pain, the kind...

A condensed Shakespeare with all of the dull parts removed, leaving only the great moments of drama: ghosts, and bloodied daggers, and dying kings.