“What had happened to the old Jack Grammar, the one who would have flubbed it somehow?Well, I reasoned: I could still flub it. Let the flubbing begin!”

“You've got the holy trinity of what a girl wants, she said. Cute, smart, funny. I don't think you realize that.”

“Maybe I'm not as intimidated by the world, by people. The worst thing that people can really do is say 'no' to you. And 'no' isn't that bad because eventually it helps point you in the right direction, I think. Helps you find 'yes.”

“It was massive. A blurting, busting, backfire! A flabbergasting, fire-breathing, flub-explosion! A propelling, paint-stripping, prison-break!”

“Next time I tell you someone from Texas should not be president of the United States, please pay attention."[Shrub Flubs His Dub, The Nation, June 18, 2001]”

“Then Jack takes me in his arms, and although I am still distraught, I cannot help but notice how well I fit in them, my head perfectly right for the crook of his neck.”

“I suppose that it was inevitable that my word-base broadened. I could now for the first time pick up a book and read and now begin to understand what the book was saying. Anyone who has read a great deal can imagine the new world that opened. Let me tell you something: from then until I left that prison, in every free moment I had, if I was not reading in the library, I was reading in my bunk. You couldn’t have gotten me out of my books with a wedge...Months passed without my even thinking about being imprisoned. In fact, up to then, I never had been so truly free in my life.”