“Dan watched in awe. "I didn't know you talk Turkey.""I speak Turkish.”

“I was in awe of him. I didn't speak; I listened.”

“A voice spoke. It sounded like a lion would speak, if it could talk. I WARNED YOU!In a way that would probably have been comic to watch, Lucinda and I turned, slowly, to see Spider the cat sitting between us and the door.‘The cat just spoke,’ said Lucinda blankly.‘I know,’ I said.‘Cats don’t talk.’‘I know that, too.’I’m not a cat. And I told you to stay away from here.”

“I had a real revelation. We were all in robes, and they made some Turkish coffee for us. The professor explained how the coffee was made very different from anywhere else, and I realized, 'So fucking what?' Which kids even in Turkey give a shit about Turkish coffee? All day I had looked at young people in Istanbul. They were all drinking what every other kind in the world drinks, and they were wearing clothes that look like they were bought at the Gap, and they are all using cell phones. They were like kids everywhere else. It hit me that, for young people, this whole world is the same now. When we're making products, there is no such thing as a Turkish phone, or a music player that young people in Turkey would want that's different from one young people elsewhere would want. We're just one world now.”

“You see? I don’t know what ‘mature’ means, either, and you could talk all night and I still wouldn’t know. It’s all just words to me, Frank. I watch you talking and I think: Isn’t that amazing? He really does think that way; these words really do mean something to him. Sometimes it seems I’ve been watching people talk and thinking that all my life. And maybe it means there’s something awful the matter with me, but it’s true.”

“I guess she didn't know how much she talked or how much I listened.”