“As it was, things went from bad to worse, as they often will when amateurs are involved in an activity that they perform in bad temper – or in a hurry.”

“There is a certain relief in change, even though it be from bad to worse; as I have found in traveling in a stage coach, that it is often a comfort to shift one's position and be bruised in a new place.”

“Of course: because it was in one of the camps that he went blind. They had performed some failed experiment on his eyes in the camp.‘No, not summer camp,’ Franny had to tell Lilly, who had always been afraid of being sent to summer camp, and was unsurprised to hear that they tortured the campers.”

“Homer and Candy passed by the empty and brightly lit dispensary; they peeked into Nurse Angela’s empty office. Homer knew better than to peek into the delivery room when the light was on. From the dormitory, they could hear Dr. Larch’s reading voice. Although Candy held tightly to his hand, Homer was inclined to hurry – in order not to miss the bedtime story.”

“Wallace Worthington would have reminded Wilbur Larch of someone he might have met at the Channing-Peabodys’, where Dr. Larch went to perform his second abortion – the rich people’s abortion, as Larch thought of it. Wallace Worthington would strike Homer Wells as what a real King of New England should look like.”

“They were involved in that awkward procedure of getting to unknow each other.”

“If (a writer) has applied himself to an art for 15 or 20 years and they’ve gotten good at it, and they’re expected to do something else to support themselves while the industry that sells this craft supports itself very well, something is badly wrong. Morally wrong.”