“Would the world ever have been made if its maker had been afraid of making trouble?Making life means makingtrouble. There’s only one way of escaping trouble; and that’s killing things.”

“That’s the thing about a human life-there’s no control group, no way to ever know how any of us would have turned out if any variables had been changed.”

“Why had his mother gone to the trouble of bringing him into the world if the most exciting moment in his life was having been made lame by a bayonet?”

“Making Life means making trouble”

“a fellow is more afraid of the trouble he might have than he ever is of the trouble he's already got. He'll cling to trouble he's used to before he'll risk a change. Yes. A man will talk about how he'd like to escape from living folks. But it's the dead folks that do him the damage. It's the dead ones that lay quiet in one place and dont try to hold him, that he cant escape from.”

“Assumptions are dangerous things to make, and like all dangerous things to make -- bombs, for instance, or strawberry shortcake -- if you make even the tiniest mistake you can find yourself in terrible trouble. Making assumptions simply means believing things are a certain way with little or no evidence that shows you are correct, and you can see at once how this can lead to terrible trouble. For instance, one morning you might wake up and make the assumption that your bed was in the same place that it always was, even though you would have no real evidence that this was so. But when you got out of your bed, you might discover that it had floated out to sea, and now you would be in terrible trouble all because of the incorrect assumption that you'd made. You can see that it is better not to make too many assumptions, particularly in the morning.”