“All things being equal, why not be married to a rich man? (Somewhere, Hannah thinks, there must be a needlepoint pillow asking this very question in a cleverer way.)”

“I was asked once,'your a smart man,why arnt you rich?I replied 'your a rich man,why arnt you smart?”

“I was asked once, 'you're a smart man,why aren't you rich?' I replied, 'you're a rich man, why aren't you smart?”

“Being the best was as equal to being in the middle, which was equal to being the worst. All were merely a state of being. It was how a person felt in that state and why they were in that state that was the important thing.”

“Never in his life had occasion to ask himself, "Why are things the way they are?" Why should he bother, when the way they were was always perfect? Why are things the way they are? The question to which there is no answer, and up till then he was so blessed he didn't even know the question existed.”

“In the final analysis, the questions of why bad things happen to good people transmutes itself into some very different questions, no longer asking why something happened, but asking how we will respond, what we intend to do now that it happened.”