“Don’t underrate ordinary human decency,” Josh said quietly. “There’s more of heaven in a guy who hands a cold soda to a hot, tired panhandler than there is in fifty moral philosophers.”
“However this miraculous place worked, it seemed real enough. The sun was hot, the soda was cold, the sky was blue, the grass was green. What more did he need to know?”
“Normal: lacking in taste, compassion, understanding, kindness, and ordinary human decency.”
“Don’t overestimate the decency of the human race.”
“Of all human activities, writing is the one for which it is easiest to find excuses not to begin – the desk’s too big, the desk’s too small, there’s too much noise, there’s too much quiet, it’s too hot, too cold, too early, too late. I had learned over the years to ignore them all, and simply to start.”
“He was a philosopher, if you know what that was.’‘A man who dreams of fewer things than there are in heaven and earth,’ said the Savage promptly.‘Quite so…”