“The essence of America lies not in the headlined heroes . . . but in the everyday folks who live and die unknown, yet leave their dreams as legacies.”

“Nite Owl II: But the country's disintegrating. What's happened to America? What's happened to the American dream?The Comedian: It came true. You're lookin' at it.”

“Quit planning your dream and start living it.”

“For you are life, rarer than a quark and unpredictable beyond the dreams of Heisenberg; the clay in which the forces that shape all things leave their fingerprints most clearly.”

“You are life, rarer than a quark and unpredictable beyond the dreams of Heisenberg; the clay in which the forces that shape all things leave their fingerprints most clearly.”

“Heroes in fact die with one's youth. They are pinned like butterflies to the setting board of early memories—the time when skies were always blue, the sun shone and the air was filled with the sounds and scents of grass being cut. I find myself still as desperate to read the Sussex score in the stop-press as ever I was; but I no longer worship heroes, beings for whom the ordinary scales of human values are inadequate. One learns that as one grows up, so do the gods grow down. It is in many ways a pity: for one had thought that heroes had no problems of their own. Now one knows different!”

“Death is more uni­ver­sal than life; everyone dies but not every­one lives.”