“Perhaps the most terrible (or wonderful) thing that can happen to an imaginative youth, aside from the curse (or blessing) of imagination itself, is to be exposed without preparation to the life outside his or her own sphere - the sudden revelation that there is a there out there.”

“All a person can do in this life is gather about him his integrity, his imagination, and his individuality – and with these ever with him, out front and in sharp focus, leap into the dance of experience.”

“When we accept small wonders, we qualify ourselves to imagine great wonders.”

“The oyster was an animal worthy of New Orleans, as mysterious and private and beautiful as the city itself. If one could accept that oysters build their houses out of their lives, one could imagine the same of New Orleans, whose houses were similarly and resolutely shuttered against an outside world that could never be trusted to show proper sensitivity toward the oozing delicacies within.”

“She closed her eyes and tried to imagine sex entering the picture. Would sex enter the picture in a silk robe, or would it be as nude as a platter of cold cuts? Would sex enter the picture from the left or the right? Would it ring first, or would it just slide in slyly, too quick and slippery to be denied; or, would sex barge in forcibly, red-faced and green-bereted, pushing all other things aside?”

“In the end, perhaps we should simply imagine a joke; a long joke that's continually retold in an accent too thick and strange to ever be completely understood. Life is that joke my friends. The soul is the punch line.”

“Anything can be misused. Furthermore, every individual has to assume responsibility for his or her own actions, even the poor and the young. A social system that decrees otherwise is inviting intellectual atrophy and spiritual stagnation.”