“Despite lack of any training with a lightsaber, Finn was athletic and courageous. In tandem with such traits, the saber made him a formidable fighter.”

“Despite the difference in size between the girl and her assailants, it was looking as if she was not in need of any outside assistance.”

“To date, however, the boy had proved himself relentlessly ordinary.”

“One did not have to be trained as a pilot to infer that a dead console did not bode well for future voyaging.”

“Facts can be most persuasive.”

“She stood and extended a hand. He glanced at it, his dark gaze rising to her face, then gratefully accepted her offer of assistance. “Follow me,” Rey said. She turned and broke into a run, the grateful Finn allowing himself to be guided.”

“There’s a Blarina merchant there named Ohn Gos who is afflicted with the sorry habit of listening sympathetically.”

“You know, Burke, I don’t know which species is worse. You don’t see them killing each other for a percentage.”

“Man and thranx had been so close for so long that they were no longer thought of as aliens. More like short people in shiny suits.”

“was at once appalled and impressed. Personally, he could not recall having read or heard of an instance where a human economist had resolved a disagreement with a fellow academician by ripping out the other's tendons and ligaments.”

“Unlike in simulations, reality bled.”

“remove a trigger from a gun and while the trigger itself would look decidedly unimportant, its absence would render the gun useless.”

“As all foot soldiers have known for thousands of years, there’s nothing noble about dying. Only an irritating finality. Once”

“The Hermit of the Commonwealth. That had a solid ring to it. Stoic and aesthetic. There was only one problem with the noble life he had set out for himself. It was a terrible way to meet girls. Whoever”

“As all foot soldiers have known for thousands of years, there’s nothing noble about dying. Only an irritating finality.”

“Expanding outward from the explosion, a tremendous burst of heat tore through the Hosnian system’s other worlds, searing their surfaces clean of life”

“If you know less than everything, you always feel inadequate.”

“This time she was sure she managed a grin. ‘I can’t figure you, Hicks. Soldiers aren’t supposed to be optimists.’ ‘Yeah, I know. You’re not the first to point it out. I’m a freakin’ anomaly.”

“I’ve lived for over one thousand years, son. Long enough to see the same eyes in different people.”

“Formal profile or not, of one thing he was now certain: They had badly underestimated what had seemed to be a Resistance pilot on the verge of physical and emotional collapse.”

“Two surviving human beings on the entire planet, Ruslan thought, and they can’t stand each other. A fitting metaphor for the entire species.”

“Niima was a functioning armpit of a town and nothing more, a place where no one asked questions and everyone went quietly about their own business.”

“Nobody came to Jakku.”

“The trouble with computers, she thought, was that they had no intuitive senses. Only deductive ones. You had to ask the right question.”

“I know what I have to do, but I don’t know if I have the strength to do it.” Ren moved out onto the walkway toward Han. “Will you help me?” “Yes,” Han told him. “Anything.”

“His only fear then was that the man might shoot first and ask questions later. Thankfully, he did not.”

“That weapon—is mine.” Finn all but snarled his reply. “Come and get it.”

“He was training a new generation of Jedi. There was no one else left to do it, so he took the burden on himself. Everything was going good, until one boy, an apprentice, turned against him and destroyed it all. Everything Luke had worked toward: gone. Luke felt responsible. He walked away from everything.”

“But patience had to be learned alone.”

“It is you,” Ren murmured.”

“If she let go or otherwise lost her grip, of course, it would solve all her problems. Permanently.”

“Typical Ren, Hux thought. Self-centered, arrogant, indifferent to the interests of others.”

“You will leave Starkiller at once and come to me with Kylo Ren. Leave immediately.” He added grimly, “It appears that he may have been right about the girl.”

“Maybe one day, before the universe died, Unkar Plutt would take a bath.”

“Women always figure out the truth.”

“Women always figure out the truth.”

“easier question to answer. “Who wouldn’t be? This is New Riviera, the paradise planet, the best of Mother Earth concentrated and then spread like a fine glaze on an entire world instead of just a small part of it.”

“A deep gully formed, separating her from General Hux and the arriving troopers. Utilizing the tiny position sensor emplaced in Ren’s belt, Hux had tracked him to this spot.”

“You are…you are…” The merchant tried to control himself. “You have nothing. You are nothing!”

“A planetary shield being a fairly straightforward thing, there was hardly ever a problem with the system.”

“At incredible velocity and accelerating exponentially, the concentrated volume of quintessence escaped, transforming as it did so into a state known as phantom energy and following the artificial line of egress that had been provided.”

“The blow had cauterized instantly.”

“Long-established totalitarian governments fear any kind of free expression. A sculpture can be a manifesto, a manuscripted adventure can double as a cry for rebellion.”

“I can’t do this by myself. It requires two security codes to access the full system and shut it down.”

“It was exciting and intellectually gratifying to speculate on what might lie waiting in the black gulfs when one was behind the business end of a telescope, quite another to do so isolated on an unpleasant little speck of a world such as this, confronted by a ship of non-human manufacture that uncomfortably resembled a growth instead of a familiar device for manipulating and overcoming the neat laws of physics.”

“Turning the planet into what astrophysicists called a pocket nova.”

“A stability that existed under the Empire, was reduced to anarchy by the Rebellion, was inherited in turn by the so-called Republic, and will be restored by us. Future historians will look upon this as the time when a strong hand brought the rule of law back to civilization.”

“Luke Skywalker? I thought he was just a myth.”

“I don’t get to treat many lightsaber wounds. It’s such an old weapon. People today prefer to fight with rifles and blasters, from long range.” She shrugged. “I suppose it doesn’t matter. Death is death, no matter the mechanism that is employed to beget it.”

“Higher learning does not preclude the presence of lower minds.”