“[Charlie] Moon was trying hard to get a handle on this. Maybe he's got a PhD. What with pass-fail replacing conventional grading, Internet diploma mills, and who knows what other academic innovations that has been driving the dumbing-down in American education, you couldn't tell who might have a sheepskin tucked away in his hip pocket.”

“The Flyboy who got away became president of the United States. What might have been for Warren Earl, Dick, Marve, Glenn, Floyd, Jimmy, the unidentified airman, and all the Others who had lost their lives?...And what might have been for those millions of doomed Japanese boys, abused and abandoned by their leaders? War is the tragedy of what might have been.”

“The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary.”

“Be careful what's in your heart because it will affect the heart of God.”

“Who should we be trying to make the most proud? Our family? Our friends? Our teachers or bosses? What about the one who molded us out of the earth itself, who formed us like clay, and instilled within us the very breath of life that shaped the universe?”

“To be alive was to be disappointed. You tried and failed and kept on trying, never knowing whether you'd ever get what you wanted. But sometimes we get what we need.”

“In the business world it's not what you know, it's who you know. In the academic world it's not who you know, it's whom you know.”