“How could I compete with that? Candies and toys! I had string and glue and some very complicated dynamics going on at my station. I mean, when I was assigned to that table, no one happened to mention that it was a simmering hotbed of political unrest concerning the lower case r. A wicked web indeed.”

“My political position springs from my being a novelist. In so far as I am concerned, politics and the novel are an indivisible case and I can categorically state that I became politically committed because I am a novelist, not the opposite.”

“How I waited for you! How I longed for you! he stammered. "I thought of you all the time. I saw you all the time. Your smile was everywhere." He lowered his voice and added, "Sometimes when people were talking commonplaces and your name happened to be mentioned, It would go through my heart like an electric current.”

“How could I become wicked, when I had nothing but examples of gentleness before my eyes, and none around me but the best people in the world?”

“Just because I don't know how to work a toy, doesn't mean I don't want it in my toy box.”

“When you get to be my age," Maude said "most things were a long time ago. But in here?" She tapped her chest... "Some things happened yesterday.""I nodded. I could feel how that was going to happen. It was already happening.”