“He tried not to think about his Grandma’s opinion of whores and drugs. He could only believe in the pattern he’d learned from Beckett—a pattern of respect and kindness.”

“Maybe he could have changed his mind. Maybe he could have continued thinking only about himself. But Beckett had seen her face. He’d been looking at her eyes when the grateful girl reached up to give Eve a hug.”

“His talent was as natural as the pattern that was made by the dust on a butterfly's wings. At one time he understood it no more than the butterfly did and he did not know when it was brushed or marred. Later he became conscious of his damaged wings and of their construction and he learned to think and could not fly any more because the love of flight was gone and he could only remember when it had been effortless.”

“The modern Westerner, persuaded that he has a right to "think for himself" and imagining that he exercises this right, is unwilling to acknowledge that his every thought has been shaped by cultural and historical influences and that his opinions fit, like pieces of jigsaw puzzle, into a pattern which has nothing random about it.”

“He was appalled by the examination system, when it was explained to him, he could not imagine a greater detterent to the natural wish to learn than this pattern of cramming in information and disgorging it on demand.”

“He learned about life at sixteen, first from Dostoevsky and then from the whores of New Orleans.”