“Every town you go to, they tell you what's special about their town. What they're number one at... This guy comes up and says, 'D'you know that we're the home of the world's largest frying pan?''...Really! That is great 'cause I'm writin' a new book called Things I Don't Care About.”

“Father, we come to You, Father, in the name of the Father, Father we come to You, Father, Father, just, just, Father, Father...' You don't talk to you friends like that. 'Ed, Ed, come over, Ed, Ed, Ed, you are, Ed, Ed, Ed, Ed, Ed, Ed, ooh, Ed, Ed, Ed' - he wouldn't be your friend anymore if you did that! Like, 'You keep saying Ed...my name's Joe!”

“you can tell a true war story if it embarrasses you. If you don't care for obscenity, you don't care for the truth; if you don't care for the truth, watch how you vote. Send guys to war, they come home talking dirty. ”

“You need to go sit on the pot.”

“We have our own language. Christianese... We don't say 'He's out of his mind,' no, we say 'That's our youth pastor.”

“The town could not talk, and would not listen. "How'd you like to hear about the war?" he might have asked, but the place could only blink and shrug. It had no memory, therefore no guilt. The taxes got paid and the votes got counted and the agencies of government did their work briskly and politely. It was a brisk, polite town. It did not know shit about shit, and did not care to know. ”

“If I didn't work as hard as I could, then I think it would be a bit like saying, 'God, thanks for giving me this ability, but I don't really care about it. I'm going to do something else, and I'm not going to work quite as hard.”