“There are some who go through life with a shadow hanging over them, particularly if they live in a building which has long wide awnings.”

“There are some people who believe that home is where one hangs one's hat, but these people tend to live in closets and on little pegs.”

“There are those who say that life is like a book, with chapters for each event in your life and a limited number of pages on which you can spend your time. But I prefer to think that a book is like a life, particularly a good one, which is well to worth staying up all night to finish.”

“In most cases, the best strategy for a job interview is to be fairly honest, because the worst thing that can happen is that you won't get the job and will spend the rest of your life foraging for food in the wilderness and seeking shelter underneath a tree or the awning of a bowling alley that has gone out of business.”

“The central theme of Anna Karenina," he said, "is that a rural life of moral simplicity, despite its monotony, is the preferable personal narrative to a daring life of impulsive passion, which only leads to tragedy.""That is a very long theme," the scout said. "It's a very long book," Klaus replied.[...]"Or maybe a daring life of impulsive passion leads to something else," the scout said, and in some cases this mysterious person was right. A daring life of impulsive passion is an expression which refers to people who follow what is in their hearts, and like people who prefer to follow their head, or follow a mysterious man in a dark blue raincoat, people who lead a daring life of impulsive passion end up doing all sorts of things.”

“Fetching objects for people who are too lazy to fetch them for themselves is never a pleasant task, particularly when the people are insulting you.”

“You know, there's a big world out there filled with desperate orphans who would gladly swim across an ocean of thumbtacks just to be eclipsed by the long shadow that is cast by my accomplishments.”