“Most poetry just confounds me. I really want to like it, but I can't help thinking it's a hoax. (p. 24)”

“I always wanted to be a writer, and I always wrote something – stories, poetry, articles, newsletters, letters. Most writers can't help themselves! It's a compulsion.”

“Can't you just like a girl who likes you back?''None of them likes me back. I may as well like the one I really want.”

“It's easier to be me than someone else. But just like most famous people, I just want to be left alone most of the time.”

“I broke with the academic style because I decided that life is very short, very mysterious, and I didn't have the time to waste with academics. I would only say things in the most honesty manner. If people like it, fine. If not, I can't help that. Today I couldn't write academically even if I wanted to! (Rubem Alves, p. 188)”

“Anthony took the pipe out of his mouth and smiled at her. "Sorry, dear! You know I don't mean to get like this, but I can't help it. What you want me to tell you is what I'm thinking, but I can't, because I don't know. Now, now, that's not clever, it's purely a statement of fact. We've been married quite long enough for you to know me by this tim, but you never seem to have understood properly what a tidy mind I've got. That, you know, is really why I'm always getting mixed up in this 'finding-out' business. When I see a thing all unreasonable and all at loose ends, I just have to see whether I can't straighten it out, and it's the same with my own thinking. When my own thinking's just a mess, it isn't tidy, and therefore I won't let it release its untidiness onto the world. I have to get it nicely rearranged and sorted before I can really talk.”