“ A woman's touch?!' he repeated, 'What is he thinking hermano?Stukeley frowned. ''Captain doesn't know whether it's dinnertime or doomsday, mate. That's the state Lady Losckwood's got him in.We'be tried to talk some sense into him, but it just goes in one ear and out the other. IT's not as if he had much of an attention span to begin with, but since Lady Muck came on to the scene...”

“We'll know we've got it right when they choose for themselves," he used to say. That doesn't make sense. 'That's what I thought too. I asked him what he meant, but he just shrugged. I don't think he knew himself. But I keep thinking maybe that stray is making exactly the kind of choice he talked about. We're talking about an adult dog, a dog that's been out in the woods for a long time, trying to decide whether or not we can be trusted. Whether this is his place. And it matters to him - he'd rather starve than make the wrong decision.”

“Do you remember that scene in Airplane! where the guy with the flags is waving a jet into its gate, then someone asks him where the bathrooms are, so he begins gesturing in the other direction?""So the jet crashes into the airport. Yes.""That's how it is, with him. I think I'm getting these signals, you know, and it turns out he's just looking for the toilet.”

“I think maybe part of what got him into trouble was that he did too much thinking. Sometimes he tried too hard to make sense of the world, to figure out why people were bad to each other so often.”

“I thought Oliver was trying hard before, but now I realize it's quite the opposite-- he doesn't try, he just is, makes up his mind and doesn't check if it's going to work for his image or come off wrong. Since the rest of us are being so self-aware, his presence seems calculated. No one can possibly be that breezy, saying what he thinks, feeling what he feels. I can see why people don't like him for this very reason-- it's so much easier to call him a poser.Because if he's the real deal, then that makes the rest of us fakes.”

“He read a lot. He used a lot of big words. I think maybe part of what got him into trouble was that he did too much thinking. Sometimes he tried too hard to make sense of the world, to figure out why people were bad to each other so often. A couple of times I tried to tell him it was a mistake to get too deep into that kind of stuff, but Alex got stuck on things. He always had to know the absolute right answer before he could go on to the next thing.”