“I've met talespinners before, Jake, and they're all cut more or less from the same cloth. They tell tales because they're afraid of life.”

“Things conceived by minds and made by hands can never be quite the same, even if they try their best to be identical, because they're never the same from day to day or even moment to moment.”

“And in real life endings aren't always neat, whether they're happy endings, or whether they're sad endings.”

“I've spent my whole life doing some things because they were logical and not doing others because they were not. I've seen what happens when people act on intuition, or for illogical reasons. Sometimes the results are ludicrous and embarrassing; more often they are simply horrible. But here I am, just the same, behaving like a crackbrained crystal gazer.”

“...if a person doesn't know they're hurting, why, maybe they're not. I was wrong.”

“Will I like it Jake? In your place?''I hope so, hon.''Is it very different?'I smiled. 'People pay more for gasoline and have more buttons to push. Otherwise, it's about the same.”

“They're animals, all right. But why are you so goddam sure that makes us human beings?”