“That was morality ; things that made you disgusted afterwards. No, that must be immorality. That was a large statement. What a lot of bilge I could think up at night. What rot ! I could hear Brett say it. What rot ! When you were with the English you got into the habit of using English expressions in your thinking.”

“Your life was a hypothesis. Those who die old are made of the past. Thinking of them, one thinks of what they have done. Thinking of you, one thinks of what you could have become. You were, and you will remain, made up of possibilities.”

“Yeah, I know what your English Professor tried to tell you. But if your English Professor could make a living writing fiction, they would have been doing it.”

“At Waterloo, the common dead were left to rot on the battlefield; their bones were gathered up by English contractors, shipped back to Britain, ground up, and used as bonemeal and fertilizer.”

“I used to think that when I grew up there wouldn't be so many rules. Back in elementary school there were rules about what entrance you used in the morning, what door you used going home, when you could talk in the library, how many paper towels you could use in the rest room, and how many drinks of water you could get during recess. And there was always somebody watching to make sure.What I'm finding out about growing older is that there are just as many rules about lots of things, but there's nobody watching.”

“If you put away those who report accurately, you’ll keep only those who know what you want to hear. I can think of nothing more poisonous than to rot in the stink of your own reflections.”