“If anything one writes isn't still being talked about ten years later then it wasn't worth writing in the first place.”

“I didn't think much about that statement then. But later I would-I still do. I think about it and think about it until I think I'm going crazy.”

“I guess I just couldn't see standing there -- alive, talking, thinking, breathing, being -- one second, and dead the next. It really bothered me. Death by violence isn't the same as dying any other way, accident or disease or old age. It just ain't the same.”

“Greasers will still be greasers and Socs will still be Socs. Sometimes I think it's the ones in the middle that are really the lucky stiffs.”

“Two minutes worth of signal analysis told me all I needed to know. This station "talks" to the dark matter universe about what goes on inside.""How did you cobble together a jammer so quickly?""I had one on me.”

“We never talked about the future. We never talked about what would happen when we got out of Rancho Linda. I don't know if that's being a teenager, or being a teenager in a place like Rancho Linda, but you lived only for the day, or only for the moment. It was all about getting through whatever was happening right now. You didn't worry too much about what was coming later, because right now was all you could deal with. It was like you were in a river, caught in the current, and you were going whatever way it took you. You knew you had no control over your own destiny-- so you didn't dream, and you didn't plan. There was no reason to plan. You knew you had to survive what you were going through, and the way to make it survivable was to try to have fun.”

“There isn't any real good reason for fighting except self-defense.”