“The internal combustion engine, one of the greatest technological advancements in history, has an unfortunate downside, namely air pollution so thick that, very soon, sixty-four packs of crayons will include the color Sky Brown”

“[R]epetition is as an essential element of language learning as a knife is to a lathe or fuel is to an internal combustion engine.”

“It has come to my attention, that air pollution is polluting the air!”

“It is a mistake," he said, " to suppose that the public wants the environment protected or their lives saved and that they will be grateful to any idealist who will fight for such ends. What the public wants is their own individual comfort. We know that well enough from our experience in the environmental crisis of the twentieth century. Once it was well known that cigarettes increased the incidence of lung cancer, the obvious remedy was to stop smoking, but the desired remedy was a cigarette that did not cause cancer. When it became clear that the internal-combustion engine was polluting the atmosphere dangerously, the obvious remedy was to abandon such engines, and the desired remedy was to develop non-polluting engines.”

“Lavender used to be my favorite color in the box of sixty-four crayons - you know, the one with the sharpener built into the side...It seemed like it could draw anything. It was the right color for everything. I drew lavender flowers and my father's lavender eyes, my mother's lavender smile. They were the same to me, mother, father, flowers. All good. All lavender. And I was lavender, too.”

“Sixty-four has a way of forgetting what twenty-one was like.”