“I'd rather have written 'Cheers' than anything I've written.”

“There was a message written in pencil on the tiles by the roller towel. This was it:What is the purpose of life?Trout plundered his pockets for a pen or pencil. He had an answer to the question. But he had nothing to write with, not even a burnt match. So he left the question unanswered, but here is what he would have written, if he had found anything to write with:To bethe eyesand earsand conscienceof the Creator of the Universe,you fool.”

“Having a yacht is a reason for being more cheerful than most.”

“And evolution or God or whatever arranged things genetically, to keep the little families going, to cheer them up, so that they could all have somebody to tell stories around the campfire at night, and somebody else to paint pictures on the walls of caves, and somebody else who wasn't afraid of anything and so on.”

“Trout, incidentally, had written a book about a money tree. It had twenty-dollar bills for leaves. Its flowers were government bonds. Its fruit was diamonds. It attracted human beings who killed each other around the roots and made very good fertilizer.”

“You're the man who stands on the street corner with a roll of toilet paper, and written on each square are the words, 'I love you.' And each passer-by, no matter who, gets a square all his or her own. I don't want my square of toilet paper.'I didn't realize it was toilet paper.”

“His mother understood my illness immediately, that it was my world rather than myself that was diseased.”