“Most gulls don't bother to learn more than the simplest facts of flight - how to get from shore to food and back again”

“For most gulls it was not flying that matters, but eating. For this gull, though, it was not eating that mattered, but flight.”

“I want to live for something. I don't want to live to get charity food to give me enough strength to go back to get more charity food.”

“Everyone does deserve a second chance, although we don't often get one, and even when we do get a second chance, we're likely to make the same mistake again. The things we learn later rather than sooner tend to result from harsh lessons, but mostly we learn nothing at all.”

“I was trying to learn to write, commencing with the simplest things, and one of the simplest things of all and the most fundamental is violent death.”

“Every decent con man knows that the simplest truth is more powerful than even the most elaborate lie.”