“Right now I'd like all my troubles to stand in front of me in a straight line, and one by one I'd give each a black eye. ”

“If I were thinking straight, I'd take you home right now,”

“We all like to believe that we'd be brave. We'd be the hero in the movie, the one who sacrifices himself to save others, the one who does the right thing when the world around him is wrong. In the movie the right choice is clear. And we leave the theater feeling good about ourselves because we can say, Me, I'd do the right thing. No one says, Me, I'd be the coward. Me, I'd rat out my neighbor to save myself. But that's what people do, mostly”

“This was 1941 and I'd been in prison eleven years. I was thirty-five. I'd spent the best years of my life either in a cell or in a black-hole. I'd only had seven months of total freedom with my Indian tribe. The children my Indian wives must have had by me would be eight years old now. How terrible! How quickly the time had flashed by! But a backward glance showed all these hours and minutes studding my calvary as terribly long, and each one of them hard to bear.”

“All right, I thought, as one long-winded winner ("And I'd like to thanks my parakeet and his veterinarian...") finally exited”

“What if it's as simple as one moment? One tiny thing, like that kiss on the rocks? What if I'd kissed him a little longer? Would he be alive right now? Or what if I'd stayed with him Friday night, what if I'd been with him… wherever he was?”