“Why can't people have what they want? The things were all there to content everybody; yet everybody has the wrong thing.”

“One morning in Saigon she'd asked what it was all about 'This whole war,' she said, 'why was everybody so mad at everybody else?'I shook my head. 'They weren't mad exactly. Some people wanted one thing, other people wanted another thing.''What did you want?''Nothing,' I said. 'To stay alive.''That's all?''Yes.”

“...it's like this white-Indian thing has gotten out of control. And the thing with the blacks and the Mexicans. Everybody blaming everybody...I don't know what happened. I can't explain it all. Just look around at the world. Look at this country. Things just aren't like they used to be.''Son, things have never been like what you think they used to be.”

“Q: What is wrong with the world?A: Everybody pays attention to pictures of things. Nobody pays attention to things themselves.”

“Why can’t somebody give us a list of things everybody thinks and nobody says, and another list of the things that everybody says but nobody thinks?”

“Everybody said so.Far be it from me to assert that what everybody says must be true. Everybody is, often, as likely to be wrong as right. In the general experience, everybody has been wrong so often, and it has taken in most instances such a weary while to find out how wrong, that the authority is proved to be fallible. Everybody may sometimes be right; "but that's no rule," as the ghost of Giles Scroggins says in the ballad.”