“I spoke to Sylvia. "Do you think this is a good life?”

“Do you think people love having jobs, Sylvia asks Peter in because they offer a condoned but false responsibility that masks, for at least eight hours a day, true responsibility?”

“I believe in the goodness of people, sir, and the power of young folks like us to overcome what grown-ups like you might not be able to.―Sylvia Patterson”

“Grandfather looked away from me and out to sea, and when he spoke, it was as though he spoke to himself. “The obligations of normal human kindness – chesed, as the Hebrew has it – that we all owe. But there’s a kind of vanity in thinking you can nurse the world. There’s a kind of vanity in goodness.”I could hardly believe my ears. “But aren’t we supposed to be good?”“I’m not sure.” Grandfather’s voice was heavy. “I do know that we’re not good, and there’s a lot of truth to the saying that the road to hell is paved with good intentions.”

“And as he spoke, I was thinking, 'the kind of stories that people turn life into, the kind of lives people turn stories into.”

“...it is well known that to praise someone whose rivalry you do not dread is often a very good way of putting a spoke in the wheel of someone whose rivalry you do.”