“I was not offended, my love. An insult is like a drink; it affects one only if accepted. And pride is too heavy baggage for my journey...”

“But when they began handing out doctorates for comparative folk dancing and advanced fly-fishing, I became too stink in’ proud to use the title. I won’t touch watered whiskey and I take no pride in watered-down degrees.”

“My only regret involved the sad knowledge that I could not handle the amount of alcohol I would have enjoyed. “Easy is the descent into Hell.”

“I scrolled on down to the obituaries. I usually read the obituaries first as there is always the happy chance that one of them will make my day.”

“I have spent too much of my life opening doors for cats—I once calculated that, since the dawn of civilization, nine hundred and seventy-eight man-centuries have been used up that way. I could show you figures.”

“I will accept any rules that you feel necessary to your freedom. I am free, no matter what rules surround me. If I find them tolerable, I tolerate them; if I find them too obnoxious, I break them. I am free because I know that I alone am morally responsible for everything I do.”

“One might define adulthood as the age at which a person learns that he must die ...and accepts his sentence undismayed.”