“Leonardo's Mona Lisa is just a thousand thousand smears of paint. Michelangelo's David is just a million hits with a hammer. We're all of us a million bits put together the right way.”

“You can't be disgusting to people just because they annoy you!" she exclaimed very crossly. "Thousands of people annoy me! Millions of people annoy millions of people all the time! . . . You have to put up with them.”

“The Mona Lisa, the Mona Lisa....Leonardo had eye trouble....Art couldn't explain it....But now we're safe, since science can explain it. Maybe Milton wrote Paradise Lost because he was blind? And Beethoven wrote the Ninth Symphony because he was deaf...”

“That is what a book is: a million little things, a thousand feelings, hundreds of experiences, all melted together and sculpted into a book-shaped vessel.”

“Bismarck fought 'necessary' wars and killed thousands, the idealists of the twentieth century fight 'just' wars and kill millions.”

“If you're "one in a million", and the world is full of seven billion people, that means there are seven thousand people just like you.”