“I know, I know," Moore said. "Mad beliefs like that, eh? Must be some metaphor, right? Must mean something else?" Shook his head. "What an awfully arrogant thing. What if faiths are exactly what they are? And mean exactly what they say?" "Stop trying to make sense of it and just listen," Dane said."And what," Moore said, "if a large part of the reason they're so tenacious is that they're perfectly accurate?”

“They call it love," said Vernon. "I don't know what they mean by it. What do you mean [by love]?""I don't exactly know," said Temple slowly. "I suppose it's wanting to be with a person, and thinking about nothing else. And thinking they're the most beautiful and all that. And going over everything that they've ever said to you, and wanting— Well, I suppose if it's really love you want to marry them.”

“One morning in Saigon she'd asked what it was all about 'This whole war,' she said, 'why was everybody so mad at everybody else?'I shook my head. 'They weren't mad exactly. Some people wanted one thing, other people wanted another thing.''What did you want?''Nothing,' I said. 'To stay alive.''That's all?''Yes.”

“Exactly!" said Deep Thought. "So once you do know what the question actually is, you'll know what the answer means.”

“I've been clinically diagnosed with sociopathy,' I said. 'Do you know what that means?''It means you're a freak,' he said.'It means that you're about as important to me as a cardboard box,' I said. 'You're just a thing - a piece of garbage that no one's thrown away yet. Is that what you want me to say?''Shut up,' said Rob. He was still acting tough, but I could see his bluster was starting to fail. He didn't know what to say.'The thing about boxes,' I said, 'is that you can open them up. Even though they're completely boring on the outside, there might be something interesting inside. So while you're saying all of these stupid, boring things I'm imagining what it would be like to cut you open and see what you've got in there.”

“They're not. That's partly what's so awful. I mean they're not real poets. They're just people that write poems that get published and anthologized all over the place but they're not poets.”