“Why do people keep doing stuff?" he said, talking to himself it seemed.Swin hesitated."Wiping counters down and taking pictures. Cheating. Defending things."Swin couldn't see Kyle's face. It appeared he was about to say more, then thought better of it. It seemed he was going to laugh or cry; of course he was going to do neither. It was a moment of defeat, nothing more. Kyle looked back toward the woods where he'd thrown the gun. Swin felt he had to speak."It's involved," he said. "Many schools of thought. In layman's terms, being the most sophisticated monkey makes you the most confused monkey. Taking action, any at all, is a way to alleviate that confusion. You, you're one of the least sophisticated of us sophisticated monkeys, and therefore suffer less confusion, and have less use for the empty actions that alleviate confusion. I don't mean that as a put-down."Though Kyle didn't move, Swin knew he was listening, knew the explanation was somehow helping.”

“So once the zookeeper realized it was the monkeys who stole the bananas, he knew there was only one way he'd be able to get them back.""How?" I whispered. My throat was so sore."Don't talk. He had to beat them in shuffleboard, of course.""What?""I said don't talk. Monkeys love shuffleboard."He used a page from a homework assignment he'd failed and a stack of quarters to make a shuffleboard court. I watched the monkeys and the zookeepers have their showdown while I sipped the last of my applejuice."Need more?" Graham asked me without looking up, when my straw skidded against the dry bottom of the box."Uh uh.""You're supposed to drink juice.""I just drank some.""More, though."I shook my head."Drink more juice or the monkeys are going to kill you. The only thing they love more than shuffleboard is beating up dehydrated sick boys.”

“I never knew words could be so confusing," Milo said to Tock as he bent down to scratch the dog's ear."Only when you use a lot to say a little," answered Tock.Milo thought this was quite the wisest thing he'd heard all day.”

“So do all animals react that way to you? I know you said rats steer clear.""Most do. They see a human, but they smell someting else. It confuses them. Canines are the worst, though." He paused. "No, cats are the worst. I really don't like cats."I laughed.”

“He tousled Baby's hair, then looked up at Tiger Lily. "The woods have rules." He put Baby down gingerly in his trough with his bottle. "But the rules are ugly.""It's nature," she said, thoughtfully."I have a lot of disagreements with nature," he said, looking confused, and his downy brow wrinkled over his eyes.”

“he'd once believed that the answer lay somehow in themusic he created, he suspected now that He'd been mistaken. The more he thought about it, the more he'd come to realize that for him, music had always been a movement away from reality rather than a means of living in it more deeply. .. he now knew that burying himself in music had less to do with God than a selfish desire to escape.”