“People like Eunice just never had quite figured out how to get along in the world. They might be perfectly intelligent, but they were subject to speckles and flushes; their purses resembled wastepaper baskets; they stepped on their own skirts. ”

“I've never quite believed that one chance is all I get”

“One sad thing about this world is that the acts that take the most out of you are usually the ones that people will never know about.(from 'Celestial Navigation')”

“They were like people who run to meet, holding out their arms, but their aim is wrong; they pass each other and keep running.”

“...it's closeness that does you in. Never get too close to people, son.”

“You ever wonder what a Martian might think if he happened to land near an emergency room? He’d see an ambulance whizzing in and everybody running out to meet it, tearing the doors open, grabbing up the stretcher, scurrying along with it. ‘Why,’ he’d say, ‘what a helpful planet, what kind and helpful creatures.’ He’d never guess we’re not always that way; that we had to, oh, put aside our natural selves to do it. ‘What a helpful race of beings,’ a Martian would say. Don’t you think so?”

“Bravest thing about people is how they go on loving mortal beings after finding out there's such a thing as dying.”