“Never say you are five feet nine whenyou are five feet eight and a half" was the first one I encountered.Another was, "Always say some prayers at night because it might turnout that there is a God.”

“Always say some prayers at night because it might turn out that there is a God.”

“The first person who says anything unpleasant will get a swift kick in the ass. ”

“Last night as your breathingsettled into sleepwhat I heard was the half-forgotten sound,the velvet rush and hiss,the automatic clickas the record player's arm runs out,is brushed awayat the record's centre,the pulse of its subsidingoddly comforting.33 1/3 rpm.The knowledge that when the music ends,there will not be silence.”

“I never killed anybody and I never developed an intense level of hatred for the enemy. Because my war ended before I ever put on a uniform; I was on active duty all my time at school; I killed my enemy there.”

“As I had to do whenever I glimpsed this river, I thought of Phineas. Not of the tree and pain, but of one of his favorite tricks, Phineas in exaltation, balancing on one foot on the prow of a canoe like a river god, his raised arms invoking the air to support him, face transfigured, body a complex set of balances and compensations, each muscle aligned in perfection with all the others to maintain this supreme fantasy of achievement, his skin glowing from immersions, his whole body hanging between river and sky as though he had transcended gravity and might by gently pushing upward with his foot glide a little way higher and remain suspended in space, encompassing all the glory of the summer and offering it to the sky.”

“I began to know that each morning reasserted the problems of night before, that sleep suspended all but changed nothing, that you couldn’t make yourself over between dawn and dusk.”