“Joan Finch is tall and sickly thin. She is wearing a tight black dress that accentuates her bony legs, the crookedness of her body. She looks like a burnt matchstick.”

“Any artist who has ever created something worthwhile has done so by staying true to himself. You can't do it any other way.”

“ Let us consider the farmer who makes his straw hat hissweetheart; or the old woman who makes a floor lamp her son;or the young woman who has set herself the task of scrapingher shadow off a wall.... Let us consider the old woman who wore smoked cows’tongues for shoes and walked a meadow gathering cow chipsin her apron; or a mirror grown dark with age that was givento a blind man who spent his nights looking into it, whichsaddened his mother, that her son should be so lost invanity.... Let us consider the man who fried roses for his dinner,whose kitchen smelled like a burning rose garden; or the manwho disguised himself as a moth and ate his overcoat, and fordessert served himself a chilled fedora.... ”

“Sick people should look sick, like in fairy tales or on television. They shouldn 't be wearing sexy dresses and shaving their legs. How was I supposed to know she was about to disappear?”

“I think, therefore I am, said a man whose mother quickly hit him on the head, saying, I hit my son on the head, therefore I am.No no, you've got it all wrong, cried the man.So she hit him on the head again and cried, therefore I am.You're not, not that way; you're supposed to think, not hit, cried the man.. . . I think, therefore I am, said the man.I hit, therefore we both are, the hitter and the one who gets hit, said the man's mother.But at this point the man had ceased to be; unconscious he could not think. But his mother could. So she thought, I am, and so is my unconscious son, even if he doesn't know it . . .”

“A blessed companion is a book! A book that, fitly chosen, is a life-long friend.”

“They did look tough - and tall. One girl in particular had legs like stilts. She was bent down, touching her toes with her ankles crossed. She looked like a grazing giraffe.”