“When nothing seems to help, I go and look at a stonecutterhammering away at his rock, perhaps a hundred times without asmuch as a crack showing in it. Yet at the hundred and firstblow it will split in two, and I know it was not that lastblow that did it, but all that had gone before.”

“In self-defence, you know, all life eventually accommodates itself to its environment, and human life is no exception.”

“Oh, God! That bread should be so dear, And flesh and blood so cheap!”

“He may have been a trifle wild.”

“A dear and long-time friend,... asked me, "Jack, how long does it usually take you to write a book?" I replied, "Of course it depends on the project and its requirements, each book has its own rules. But for a statement to the world at large, once I've thought a book through and written it in my mind, it takes me around a week or so, depending on this and that, ordinarily at the rate of a chapter a day, but I've had some two-chapters day and some chapters have taken two days. And then of course there is revision, but around a week is about right." He seemed surprised, and I was surprised by his surprise, so I thought, maybe I'm wrong. I went home and wrote this book, at the perfectly normal pace of a chapter a day, as usual...”

“She remembers this phrase from his final months of law school, when he brought home the books on starting up a business. He'd read ravenously for several weeks and then predicted: "Well, darling, we're going to be rich." Now he slaps shut the last of his books and announces, with equal assurance: "We're all going to die.”

“They'd need to do some shopping. As he adjusted the shoulders of the last dress, their eyes met in the mirror. He raised his right hand solemnly. "I swear I never played with Barbie dolls." A grin flickered at the corner of her mouth, and she opened her mouth, then closed it again. He raised an eyebrow. "You might as well say it; go on." Her expression in the mirror was both sly and apprehensive. "Just thinking perhaps you were making up for lost time." He ran his hand up beneath the back of the dress and pinched her, making her yelp. "Yup, no question about it. Lego was never like this." He stroked her ass and the straps that demarcated ass from thigh. "Not like this.”