“Sometimes you're overwhelmed when a thing comes, and you do not realize the magnitude of the affair at that moment. When you get away from it, you wonder, did it really happen to you.”

“When you stop having dreams and ideals--well, you might as well stop altogether.”

“Sometimes racial prejudice is like a hair across your cheek. You can't see it, you can't find it with your fingers, but you keep brushing it because the feel of it is irritating.”

“As long as you keep a person down, some part of you has to be down there to hold him down, so it means you cannot soar as you otherwise might.”

“People get sick and sometimes they get better and sometimes they don't. And it doesn't matter if the sickness is cancer or if it's depression. Sometimes the drugs work and sometimes they don't. Sometimes the drugs work for a while and then they stop. Sometimes the alternative stuff works and sometimes it doesn't. And sometimes you wonder if no outside interference makes any difference at all; if an illness is like a storm, if it simply has to run its course and, at the end of it, depending on how robust you are, you will be alive. Or you will be dead.”

“You know what it's like. Sometimes, you meet a wonderful person, but it's only for a brief instant. Maybe on vacation or on a train or maybe even in a bus line. And they touch your life for a moment, but in a special way. And instead of mourning because they can't be with you for longer, or because you don't get the chance to know them better, isn't it better to be glad that you met them at all?”

“I need you to get inside Wayne's head. I need someone who thinks a bit left field and in your own unpleasant way, Helen Walsh, you're a genius.He had a point. I'm lazy and illogical. I've limited people skills. I'm easily bored and easily irritated. But I have moments of brilliance. They come and they go and I can't depend on them but they do happen.”