“Call it… joy. The thing like pleasure that you feel when you've done a good thing or passed up a real tempting chance to do a bad thing. Or when the unfolding of the universe just seems especially apt.”

“When you do things right, people won't be sure you've done anything at all.”

“Real life is not quite as it is in stories. In the old tales, bad things happen, and when the tale has unfolded and come to its triumphant conclusion, it is as if the bad things had never been. Life is not as simple as that, not quite.”

“When you put down the good things you ought to have done, and leave out the bad ones you did do — well, that’s Memoirs.”

“Good can still exist when bad things happen, just as evil persists when good things happen.” - Carter to Georgina”

“You know what uranium is, right? It's a thing called nuclear weapons and other things like lots of things are done with uranium including some bad things.”

“it's good to have things done with
when they don't work
it's also good not to hate
or even forget
the person you've failed with.”

“You are entering a phase of your life in which many different things will occur… bad things that seem good at first and good things that seem bad at first.”

“I don’t regret the things I’ve done. I regret the things I didn’t do when I had the chance.”

“That was the thing about being on the inside: the world was just going on, even when it seemed like time for you had stopped for good.”