“We Hoosiers are excessively optimistic about summer.”

“Hazel's obsession with Hoosiers around the world was a textbook example of a false karass”

“They will also tell you how far along we are along the depletion curve; the optimists among them will even claim that there is nothing to worry about, because we have two or three decades of production left at the current level. It is to be expected that we will run out of fossil fuels before we run out of optimists, who are, along with fools and madmen, a renewable resource.”

“We are cynical about our own species, but less so about animals, especially wild ones. We might not shelter them from habitat destruction, but we do tend to shelter them from excessive irony.”

“It is said that one swallow does not make a summer, but can it be that because one swallow does not make a summer another swallow, sensing and anticipating summer, must not fly? If every blade of grass waited similarly summer would never occur. And it is the same with establishing the Kingdom of God: we must not think about whether we are the first or the thousandth swallow.”

“The pessimist complains about the wind; the optimist expects it to change; the realist adjusts the sails.”