“Can there really be a form of verse where all that counts is the number of syllables in a line? No patterning of stress at all? What is the point?Well, that is a fair and intelligent question and I congratulate myself for asking it.”

“Normal? What's that?""How you really look.""Can you take off all your clothes?"Okay weirdest thing ever-I just asked myself to take off all my clothes. It doesn't get much creepier. "Why on earth would I do that?""You asked me to be naked; I thought it was only fair.”

“Well, what, what new thing can they say to me that I don't know myself? And is that the point? The point here is that--one turn of the wheel, and everything changes, and these same moralizers will be the first (I'm sure of it) to come with friendly jokes to congratulate me. And they won't all turn away from me as they do now. Spit on them all! What am I now? Zéro. What may I be tomorrow? Tomorrow I may rise from the dead and begin to live anew! I may find the man in me before he's lost!”

“Well, then, why do we need all these books?" the boy asked. "So that we can understand those few lines," the Englishman answered, without appearing really to believe what he had said.”

“Hans Selye, the pioneer in the understanding of human stress, was often asked the following question: "What is the most stressful condition a person can face?" His unexpected response: "Not having something to BELIEVE in.”

“What the heck is that?" I asked, pointing to a dark stain in the nearest corner."Okay, number one question you *don't* want to hear in a creepy cellar," Archer said ...”