“But maybe that's what the dead do. They stay. They linger. Benign and sweet and painful. They don't need us. They echo all by themselves.”

“Maybe we don't need to hit the duck, Jonathan. Maybe all we need to do is say what we must say once, to another human being, openly and honestly, with humility and remorse. Maybe that's enough.”

“But no one believes in that way what he reads in a novel...Oh yes they do. If only to see themselves as wise and superior and humanistic, they need to think of us as sweet and funny, and convince themselves that they sympathize with the way we are and even love us.”

“All America lies at the end of the wilderness road, and our past is not a dead past, but still lives in us. Our forefathers had civilization inside themselves, the wild outside. We live in the civilization they created, but within us the wilderness still lingers. What they dreamed, we live, and what they lived, we dream.”

“Maybe that's all demons ever are. People like us, doing things without even knowing what we're doing.”

“...maybe we don't need a heavenly bribe or the fear of hell and damnation to make us behave decently. Maybe it would be healthier if people started believing in themselves instead.”