“Looking back, one can almost imagine them stalking through the wild with specimen bottles and outsize nets, in determined pursuit of the Ojibwa adverb or the Cherokee pronoun.”

“Some say that this is the Israelis' original sin. With this I do not agree but I think we can call it Israel's immaculate misconception.”

“I owned a Ferrari, a Range Rover, a Mercedes 560SL convertible, a Jeep Cherokee and a Nissan 300ZX. I can't remember the intricate decision tree I had to climb in order to determine which one to drive to work on any given day - it probably had something to do with the weather, or which car had more gas in the tank, or upholstery that best matched whatever shirt I happened to throw on that morning.”

“Don't worry about him," Nana would assure them. "Michael will do more in his life than you can ever imagine.”

“you cloak your offence by ignorance, saying that you did not know my determination in this matter. it is a double offence to do ill and color it so.”

“Literature is the province of imagination, and stories, in whatever guise, are meditations on life.”

“the brain's business is not to give us an accurate or objective view of the world, but to give us a useful view - one we can act on”