“When humans were young, they were pushed around in strollers. When they were old, they were pushed around in wheelchairs. In between, they were just pushed around.”

“The police, he imagined, were now walking around the parked car. He imagined their bandit chaser was parked beside the car and now they were walking around it and looking at it and not saying anything. Now they were inside it. They would see the interior of the automobile. They were tremendous, these police, because the next thing they would do was to look at each other. They would look around at the night air. They would just stand there. The police, he told himself, were marvelous when it came to just standing there. Sometimes they elaborated on it a little and pushed their caps back and forth on their heads. Nobody could push a cap back and forth on his head like a policeman.”

“Life is hard when you have no one to stick up for you. People push you around, purely because there's no one to stop them from pushing you around.”

“It was the same old crap-someone thinking they can push you around because you're young, because you're helpless. You had to just sit there and take it because you were under a certain number, because you weren't a real person yet; you could be picked up and dropped like a toy, left behind or thrown away-”

“Richard wondered how the marquis managed to make being pushed around in a wheelchair look like a romantic and swashbuckling thing to do.”

“When you were born, you were crying and everyone around you was smiling. Live your life so that when you die, you're the one who is smiling and everyone around you is crying.”