“Come on," he says. "And try to avoid the broken glass. Can't have you going to the nurse and meeting some other guy.”

“Touch? Other guys? He knew she’d have to, but to hear her say it, to know she’d tried… A terriblepressure condensed in his chest cavity and his skull, and then he heard some sort of monster in the room—”

“Next time you're about to rule out some guy because he's not your ideal, try to focus on the good things about him, because some guy is going to have to focus on the good things about you, even though he may have wanted someone more easygoing or taller. Every time you start to dissect some guy, note that he's willfully ignoring all of this in order to go out with you.”

“Life is made up of meetings and partings. People come into your life everyday, you say good morning, you say good evening, some stay for a few minutes, some stay for a few months, some a year, others a whole lifetime. No matter who it is, you meet and then you part.”

“What the hell does liberty mean anyhow? It's just a word like house or table or any other word. Only it's a special kind of word. A guy says house and he can point to a house to prove it. But a guy says come on let's fight for liberty and he can't show you liberty. He can't prove the thing he is talking about so how in the hell can he be telling you to fight for it?”

“Everything's a game,' Sagan said. 'When you get down to it. Everything in life is ultimately some kind of strategy. If you have a better strategy than the other guy, he's going down.”