Wasted steps are like wasted thoughts, just as empty and just as ignorant.
-- Moses Cooper (The Evening (1) paragraph 8)

Importance: Moses Cooper hands his son some heavy-handed and strict advice on handling chores and errands. Moses’s advice to his son is well-intended, but comes out wrongly – helping Adam to believe that his father hates him.

Do you know other ways of being big?
-- Moses Cooper (The Evening (1) paragraph 115)

Importance: Moses discusses manhood with his son. Adam insists that since he is big in both size and stature, he is more or less a man. Moses contends that there are things other than physique which dictate manhood.

The whole sky is red.
-- Levi Cooper (The Night paragraph 8)

Importance: Levi dreams of a red sky the night before the British attack the militia in Lexington. Here, the red sky is ominous of a coming storm of war, and of the deaths of numerous men and boys that will follow.

I get to feeling that we’re all asleep still, and...
-- Ruth Simmons (The Night paragraph 154)