“Will I tell them? No, as a Doctor you wouldn't tell a patient if they were dying of cancer.”

“Tell me, Doctor, are you afraid of death?""I guess it depends on how you die.”

“We’re suggesting that [kids are] missing something if they don’t read but, actually, we’re condemning kids to a lesser life. If you had a sick patient, you would not try to entice them to take their medicine. You would tell them, ‘Take this or you’re going to die.’ We need to tell kids flat out: reading is not optional.”

“If she were lying on a plate with a herring, you wouldn't be able to tell the difference.”

“You'd tell me if we were getting married, wouldn't you? I mean, you wouldn't just appear on my doorstep one day and say we were due at the church in an hour.”

“I tried to tell myself that it could be worse, that the world was not a wish-granting factory, that I was living with cancer not dying of it, that I mustn't let it kill me before it kills me,...”