“I couldn't even work up a tingle in holding An Account of the Manners and Customs of Italy; with Observations on the Mistakes of Some Travellers, with Regard to That Country. I figured people had been making goombah jokes even in 1768.”

“She was unaware that she was somewhat of a celebrity up in heaven. I had told people about her, what she did, how she observed moments of silence up and down the city and wrote small individual prayers in her journal, and the story had travelled so quickly that women lined up to know she had found where they’d been killed. She had fans in heaven.....Meanwhile, for us, she was doing important work, work that most people on Earth were too frightened even too contemplate.”

“All those people I didn't even know, I couldn't pick them out of a lineup if I had to, but they had worked their whole lives to get the knowledge that ended up saving my life. It was because of them that I was in this magnificent wave of people and music.”

“What do you suppose is the use of a child without any meaning? Even a joke should have some meaning-- and a child's more imporant than a joke, I hope. You couldn't deny that, even if you tried with both hands.”

“Wolf apparently holds me to some kind of moral standard that he himself doesn't even observe but thinks I should.”

“People think computers are different from people because they don't have minds, even though, in the Turing test, computers can have conversations with people about the weather and wine and what Italy is like, and they can even tell jokes.”