“He was a living dead man. According to official records he had died, not once, but twice. yet he still breathed”
“Conchar is an ancient Gaelic term for those who admire the king of all hunters: the wolf.To some, the wolf is a magnificent beast, the pinnacle of predatory evolution. To others, the wolf is a thing of nightmare.”
“Some may call me a vigilante. I think i've got problems to fix.”
“He had, in fact, already begun to sink into that creeping dry rot of pedagogy which is the worst and ultimate pitfall of the profession; giving the same lessons year after year had formed a groove into which the other affairs of his life adjusted themselves with insidious ease. He worked well; he was conscientious; he was a fixture that gave service, satisfaction, confidence, everything except inspiration.”
“I had a nightmare about beingTrapped in an elevator with a self-made man--He was born with a silver bootstrap in his mouth;He pulled himself up by his spoons.But when he lived in the fraternity,Before he could roll his sleeves up and get anything done,He would pack his laundry into boxesAnd mail it off to his mother and his grandmother--They would wash and iron his clothes, And then mail them back to him.”
“The will of God or the lunacy of man - it seemed to him that you could take your choice, if you wanted a good enough reason for most things. Or, alternatively (and he thought of it as he contemplated the small orderliness of the cabin against the window background of such frantic natural scenery), the will of man and the lunacy of God.”
“What a host of little incidents, all deep-buried in the past -- problems that had once been urgent, arguments that had once been keen, anecdotes that were funny only because one remembered the fun. Did any emotion really matter when the last trace of it had vanished from human memory; and if that were so, what a crowd of emotions clung to him as to their last home before annihilation? He must be kind to them, must treasure them in his mind before their long sleep.”