“I know not why any one but a schoolboy in his declamation should whine over the Commonwealth of Rome, which grew great only by the misery of the rest of mankind. The Romans, like others, as soon as they grew rich, grew corrupt; and in their corruption sold the lives and freedoms of themselves, and of one another.”

“But that was all teachers ever did, wasn’t it? They grew and grew and grew until they wondered if they were the only ones growing, and then they shrank and shrank and shrank… and all the while the children grew sharper.”

“I grew into it. It grew into me. It and I blurred at the edges, became one amorphous, seeping, crawling thing.”

“How far should one accept the rules of the society in which one lives To put it another way: at what point does conformity become corruption Only by answering such questions does the conscience truly define itself.”

“She grew broccoli, and I grew dentures. We were perfect for each other. Our love disappeared into each other like a box of toothpicks.”

“No matter where its seed fell, it made a tree which struggled to reach the sky. It grew in boarded-up lots and out of neglected rubbish heaps, and it was the only tree that grew out of cement. It grew lushly, but only in the tenements districts.... That was the kind of tree it was. It liked poor people.”