“My life is a pitiful, mechanical thing without a past, like a little wind-up car, ready to run in any direction someone points me.”

“my grandpa and grandma aren't like me. They're more like sheets drying outside on a breezy day--they change directions without any fuss. But me, if I was a sheet and the wind blew me, I'd never stop flapping.”

“Prejudices are so to speak the mechanical instincts of men: through their prejudices they do without any effort many things they would find too difficult to think through to the point of resolving to do them.”

“We can control the future, my boy, just as we wind up the mechanism in a clock. Say to yourself: I will win that race--I will come first--and you wind up the future like clockwork. The world has no choice but to obey! Can the hands of that old clock in the corner decide to stop? Can the spring in your watch decide to wind itself up and run backward? No! They have no choice. And nor has the future, once you have wound it up.”

“My father was in the kitchen putting a new washer in the kitchen faucet. He looked relieved to see Morelli standing in the hallway. He'd probably prefer I bring home someone useful, like a butcher or a car mechanic, but I guess cops are a step up from undertakers.”

“In your life, always be like a driver who runs the car not just a car.”