“I found your nose... It was in my business again.. ( :”

“Is it, then, your opinionWomen are putty in your hands?Is this the face to launch uponA thousand one night stands?First, please, would you be so kindAs to define your contributionTo modern verse, the Western mindAnd human institutions?Where, where is the long, flowing hair,The velvet suit, the broad bow tie;Where is the other-worldly air,Where the abstracted eye?Describe the influence on your verseOf Oscar Mudwarp’s mighty line,The theories of Susan SchmerschOr the spondee’s decline.You’ve labored to present us withThis mouse-sized volume; shall this equalThe epic glories of Joe Smith?He’s just brought out a sequel.Where are the beard, the bongo drums,Tattered T-shirt and grubby sandals,As who, released from Iowa, comesTo tell of wondrous scandals?Have you subversive, out of date,Or controversial ideas?And can you really pull your weightAmong such minds as these?Ah, what avails the tenure race,Ah, what the Ph.D.,When all departments have a placeFor nincompoops like thee?”

“Hope is possible, when you decide to believe that what you are hoping for is possible.”

“Not everybody will get it. People will misinterpret you and what you do. They might even call you names. So get comfortable with being misunderstood, disparaged, or ignored -- the trick is to be too busy doing your work to care.”

“There is a kind of fallout that happens when you leave college. The classroom is a wonderful, if artificial, place: Your professor gets paid to pay attention to your ideas, and your classmates are paying to pay attention to your ideas. Never again in your life will you have such a captive audience.”

“I often wonder what Einstein would have done in my position. At Peterson, I kept an Einstein poster in my room, the one that says 'Imagination is more important than knowledge.' Einstein was smart, maybe even as smart as Laserator, but he played it way too safe. Then again, nobody ever threw a grappling hook at Einstein. I like to think he would have enjoyed my work, if he could have seen it. But no one sees anything I do, not until it's hovering over Chicago.”

“In the past I had often tried to escape the grown-up world of sorrow through my imagination- dreaming that a handsome young lieutenant would ride to my rescue or that a great empresario would discover my musical talents and whisk me away. I had envisioned knights in shining armor and happily ever after scenes to escape from rules or boredom or pain; including a vision of my mother walking through our front door whole and well again. Now I knew that a lifetime of escape led to a life like Aunt Bertie's. My imagination was a gift, but I had to live in the real world. My eyes had been opened this summer to poverty and crime and abuse and I needed to use my imagination not to escape, but to help people like Irina and Katya, to make my own contribution as the women in the women's pavilion had done. I couldn't do it in the same way Jane Adams and my grandmother and Aunt Mat were, but I would find my own way and my own time.”