“Call me old-fashioned, but whenever I see those wire-fortified ribbons, I have the secret stab of nostalgia for old-timey ribbon, the kind whose ends flop like spaniel ears. I'm suspicious of unnaturally perky ribbon.”

“Liberty medals...Are they trying to bribe me with coloured ribbons? I wouldn't kill a man for one of those things. Or go and be killed. Any shooting I do is to save my own life, and not for a ribbon and a hunk of bronze. [says Mäkelä]”

“I see you have added a colored ribbon to your hair Master McArthur. Do you have an assortment of different color ribbons at home: yellow, white, pink, blue to match your pretty blue eyes?”

“It's curling ribbon, but you don't have to curl it. You don't have to do everything the ribbon tells you to do. Don't live your life like that.”

“The longest life is no more than a sliver of light between two boundless ribbons of dark, like the light you see through the chinks of a log cabin at sunrise. And that last ribbon of dark, the one that comes after you are gone, that one goes on until the end of time.”

“I leave a lovely opalescent ribbon: I know this.”