“Humor is a way of holding off how awful life can be, to protect yourself. Finally, you get just too tired, and the news is too awful, and humor doesn't work anymore.”

“science never cheered up anyone. the human situation is just too awful.”

“That's a mistake,' he said. 'You miss an awful lot of life that way. That's why you Yankees are so cold,' he said. 'You think too much. That's why you marry so seldom.”

“Swoopers write a story quickly, higgledy-piggledy, crinkum-crankum, any which way. Then they go over it again painstakingly, fixing everything that is just plain awful or doesn’t work. Bashers go one sentence at a time, getting it exactly right before they go on to the next one. When they’re done they’re done.”

“Now, you can say your Daddy is right and the other little child's Daddy is wrong, but the universe is an awfully big place. There is room enough for an awful lot of people to be right about things and still not agree.”

“. . . but the Universe is an awfully big place. There is room enough for an awful lot of people to be right about things and still not agree.”

“Don't put one foot in your job and the other in your dream, Ed. Go ahead and quit, or resign yourself to this life. It's just too much of a temptation for fate to split you right up the middle before you've made up your mind which way to go.”