“There was more. There was always more.”

“It is always pitiful when any human being falls into a condition hardly more respectable than that of an animal. How much more pitiful it is when the person who falls has had all the advantages!”

“It goes against the American storytelling grain to have someone in a situation he can't get out of, but I think this is very usual in life. [...] And it strikes me as gruesome and comical that in our culture we have an expectation that a man can always solve his problems. There is an implication that if you just have a little more energy, a little more fight, the problem can always be solved. That is so untrue that it makes me want to cry--or laugh.”

“Lonesome, no more!”

“More and more people back then, and not just Andrew MacIntosh, had found ensuring the survival of the human race a total bore.”

“Who is more to be pitied, a writer bound and gagged by policemen or one living in perfect freedom who has nothing more to say?”

“The more pain I train myself to stand, the more I learn. You are afraid of pain now, Unk, but you won't learn anything if you don't invite the pain. And the more you learn, the gladder you will be to stand the pain.”