“Nuviliame tik patys save. Turėtume pasistengti kuo labiau sumažinti visą tą atsakomybę, kurią jaučiamės esą skolingi kitiems.”

“Did anyone who was in love and was unsatisfied with how he was loved in return ever feel saved?”

“I realize that a writer's business is setting fire to Piggy Sneed-and trying to save him-again and again; forever.”

“In Wally’s bedroom Homer marveled at how the world was simultaneously being invented and destroyed.Nothing marvelous about that, Dr. Larch would have assured him. At St. Cloud’s, except for the irritation about sugar stamps and other aspects of the rationing, very little was changed by the war. (Or by what people once singled out as the Depression, thought Wilbur Larch.)We are an orphanage; we provide these services; we stay the same – if we’re allowed to stay the same, he thought. When he would almost despair, when the ether was too overpowering, when his own age seemed like the last obstacle and the vulnerability of his illegal enterprise was as apparent to him as the silhouettes of the fir trees against the sharp night skies of autumn, Wilbur Larch would save himself with this one thought: I love Homer Wells, and I have saved him from the war.”

“When the valley surrounding St. Cloud's was cleared and the second growth (scrub pine and random, unmanaged softwoods) sprang up everywhere, like swamp weed, and when there were no more logs to send downriver, from Three Mile Falls to St. Cloud's--because there were no more trees--that was when the Ramses Paper Company introduced Maine to the twentieth century by closing down the saw mill and the lumberyard along the river at St. Cloud's and moving camp downstream. . .There were no Ramses Paper Company people left behind, but there were people. . .Not one of the neglected officers of the Catholic Church of St. Cloud's stayed; there were more souls to save by following the Ramses Paper Company downstream.”

“Kuo labiau stengiuos savim būt, tuo labiau ne savim būnu.”

“Aber das ist es nun mal, was wir tun: wir träumen weiter gegen den Strom und unsere Träume entschlüpfen uns fast so lebendig, wie wir sie heraufbeschwören können.”