“Every pilot needs a co-pilot, and let me tell you, it is awful nice to have someone sitting there beside you, especially when you hit some bumpy air.”

“Life has a status in the physical universe. It is part of the order of nature. It has a high place in that order, since it probably represents the most complex state of organisation that matter has achieved in our universe. We on this planet have an especially proud place as men; for in us as men matter has begun to contemplate itself...”

“Child, if you forever hide in the shadows, watching life through a window, you will miss the many lessons learned by simply living.”

“Thank you, Co-Pilot Obvious.”

“Could I be having a midlife crisis? Ahead of schedule. God, I'd just turned thirty-four. How batty would I be by fourty?”

“Every country has its cocktail-party question. A simple one-sentence query, the answer to which unlocks a motherlode of information about the person you just met.... In Switzerland it is, Where are you from? That is all you need to know about someone.”

“You can be as mad as a mad dog at the way things went, you can curse the fates, but when it comes to the end, you have to let go.”