“I'm in no position to hand down any advice," he said, "but there's a rule I follow when I don't know what to do.""A rule?""If you have to choose between something that has form and something that doesn't, go for the one without form. That's my rule. Whenever I run into a wall I follow that rule, and it always works out. Even if it's hard going at the time.”

“On the day of the race, as I run those very streets, will I be able to fully enjoy this autumn in New York? Or will I be too preoccupied? I won't know until I actually start running. If there's one hard and fast rule about marathons, it's that.”

“[...] he made it a rule never to touch a book by any author who had not been dead at least 30 years."That's the only kind of book I can trust", he said."It's not that I don't believe in contemporary literature," he added, "but I don't want to waste valuable time reading any book that has not had the baptism of time. Life is too short.”

“It's unfair."As a rule, life is unfair," I said.Yeah, but I think I did say some awful things."To Dick?"Yeah."I pulled the car over to the shoulder of the road and turned off the ignition. "That's just stupid, that kind of thinking," I said, nailing her with my eyes. "Instead of regretting what you did, you could have treated him decently from the beginning. You could've tried to be fair. But you didn't. You don't even have the right to be sorry.”

“That was the rule. Break one of my rules once, and I’m bound to break many more.”

“Never trust a man who carries a handkerchief, I always say. One of many prejudicial rules of thumb.”

“Grammar is like the air: someone higher up might try to set rules for its use, but people won't necessarily follow them.”