“I made a quick calculation: a 180-pound man, falling thirty feet under an acceleration of 32.2 feet per second square—I drew the shade and turned away from the window and closed my eyes.”

“This is an indisputable fact: there are many, many people around here who love things that will never love them back.”

“Just as primitive man believed himself to stand face to face with demons and believed that could he but know their names he would become their master, so is contemporary man faced by this incomprehensible, which disorders his calculations. "If I can but grasp it, if I can but cognise it", so he thinks, "I can make it my servant.”

“There was some women in a café the other week that I was sat in, and she came up and she sat down with her mate and she was talkin' loudly goin' on about "oh the baby's lovely." They said it's got, er, lovely big eyes, er, really big hands and feet. Now that doesn't sound like a nice baby to me. I felt like sayin' it sounds like a frog. But I thought I don't know her, there's only so much you can say to a stranger. I don't know what kept me from sayin' it.”

“My language is the common prostitute that I turn into a virgin.”

“No book can ever be finished. While working on it we learn just enough to find it immature the moment we turn away from it”

“Uh, guys?” Jenks said, hovering at the window. “Fountain Square is on fire.” “What?” I jumped to my feet and turned in one motion. Al rushed to the window, and we pressed our foreheads to the glass, looking down.”