K.A. Applegate, “Animorphs”

I’ll believe he broke the rules. I’ll never believe he did wrong.

We live in paradise and we don’t even know it. And we don’t know when it might end. We’d have to be fools not to enjoy it while we can.

No, we’re too simple for all that. We’re too stupid to lie and manipulate. We’re too stupid to be ruthless. We’re too stupid to know how to build powerful weapons designed to annihilate our enemies. Until you came we were too stupid to know how to kill.

A fool is strong so that others will see. A wise person is strong for himself.

‘What can we give them that would satisfy them?’ 'Our souls,’ Jake answered quietly. The first words he had spoken all night. 'If they don’t already have them.’

We can’t afford to get so locked into one idea that we defend it to the death, without really knowing if that idea works in the real world.

Violent but peace-loving. Passionate but cerebral. Humane but cruel. Impulsive but calculating. Generous but selfish. Humans. Altogether a contradictory and deeply flawed species.

You needed love to win at the game of music. I played a riff … The audience sat forward … I’ve rewritten the rules. I played of sadness. I played of loneliness. Despair. Love found and lost. I played of tragic misunderstanding and weary cynicism and defeat. I played of perseverance, endurance beyond all suffering. Endurance in the face of hopelessness, hope when even hope was a betrayal. My adge spoke of every terrible moment of my life. It spoke of the loss of my people. The loss of friends. Losses and losses. And yet, though I played so much sadness, the music at the same time denied despair. How could anyone despair while such music was being played? I could see it in [their] faces: They heard the loneliness and in that expression of loneliness found comfort for their own. Oh, yes, I had them. I owned them, the audience. I had them through and through and they would go with me wherever my adge led.