“THE WAIT: It is life in slow motion,it's the heart in reverse,it's a hope-and-a-half:too much and too little at once.It's a train that suddenlystops with no station around,and we can hear the cricket,and, leaning out the carriagedoor, we vainly contemplatea wind we feel that stirsthe blooming meadows, the meadowsmade imaginary by this stop.”

“We must hurry!’ said Mr. Wonka. ‘We have so much time and so little to do! No! Wait! Strike that! Reverse it!”

“... life is a flickering candle we all carry around. A gust of wind, a meaningless accident, a microsecond of carelessness, and it's out. Forever.”

“We may avoid shame if we choose, for shame seldom takes us unawares but has its warning cry, and we can hear that cry as clearly as we can hear the coming of the north wind... The man lying in the mud hadn't heard the coming of the north wind.”

“At best Americans give but a limited attention to history. Too much happens too rapidly, and before we can evaluate it, or exhaust its meaning or pleasure, there is something new to concern us. Ours is the tempo of the motion picture, not that of the still camera, and we waste experience as we wasted the forest.”

“Life itself is too great a miracle for us to make so much fuss about potty little reversals of what we pompously assume to be the natural order.”