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1 " None of it was true but rumors are like germs. They spread and multiply almost in a breath and before you know it, everyone is contaminated. "
― C.J. Tudor , The Chalk Man
2 " Death was final and absolute and there was nothing anyone could do to change it. "
3 " Never assume," my dad once told me. "To assume makes an 'ass' out of 'u' and 'me'. "
4 " Thin, I think, that fabric between realities. Maybe minds aren't lost. Maybe they just slip through and find a different place to wander. "
5 " Wise man. Kids from the moment they’re born, they fill your heart with love…and terror. Especially little girls. You want to protect them from everything. And they you can’t, you feel like you’ve failed as a father. You’ve saved yourself a lot of pain by not having children. "
6 " But the whole point of the novel is that if we resort to savagery society falls apart.Maybe it should. It's all fake, anyway. That's what the book's really saying. We're all just pretending to be civilized, when, deep down, we're not. "
7 " What shapes us is not always our achievements but our omissions. Not lies; simply the truths we don’t tell. "
8 " There are some things in life you can alter–your weight, your appearance, even your name–but there are others that wishing and trying and working hard can never make any difference to. Those things are the ones that shape us. Not the things we can change, but the ones we can't. "
9 " We think we want answers. But what we really want are the right answers. Human nature. We ask questions that we hope will give us the truth we want to hear. The problem is, you can’t choose your truths. Truth has a habit of simply being the truth. The only real choice you have is whether to believe it or not. "
10 " Being an adult is only an illusion. When it comes down to it I’m not sure any of us ever really grow up. "
11 " The thing you have to understand is that being a good person isn’t about singing hymns, or praying to some mystical, god. It isn’t about wearing a cross or going to church every Sunday. Being a good person is about how you treat others. A good person doesn’t need a religion, because they are content within themselves that they are doing the right thing. "
12 " You know what someone once told me? Secrets are like arseholes. We all have them. It’s just that some are dirtier than others. "
13 " Principles are nice things. If you can afford them. I like to think I am a principled man, but then, most men do. The fact is, we all have a price, we all have buttons that can press to make us do things that are not entirely honorable. Principles do not pay the mortgage or clear our debts. A principled man is generally a man who has everything he wants or absolutely nothing to lose. "
14 " For who are we if not the sum of our experiences, the things that we gather and collect in life? Once you strip those away, we become just a mass of flesh, bone, and blood vessels. "
15 " Real friends are there no matter what. Real friends are people you love and hate in equal measure but who are as much a part of you as yourself. "
16 " He's dead.''Dead?'Funny how people always repeat that word, even though they know they've heard it correctly. A kind of denial by delay. "
17 " History itself is only ever a story, told by the ones who survive it. "
18 " We think we want answers. But what we really want are the right answers. Human nature. We ask questions that we hope will give us the truth we want to hear. The problem is, you can't choose your truths. Truth has a habit of simply being the truth. The only real choice you have is whether to believe it or not. "
19 " They were chanting a lot of stuff about love but they seemed full of hate. "
20 " However, even as a kid, I could sense the anger - the venom - of those protesters. Something about their eyes, the spittle that exploded from their mouths, the way they brandished their banners like weapons. They were chanting a lot of stuff about love but they seemed full of hate. "
