“The mother...swinging the children by pulling on a length of string, while at the same time she kept and eye on them with that protective watchfulness, half animal, half angelic, which is the quality of motherhood. ”

“She looked like a mother protecting her child of course, we're talking a half-crazed, bloodthirsty mother.”

“Please forgive me, Mother. I apologize for saying 'fuck.'"Then he straightened and addressed Doug. "Which, by the way, was repeated sixty-seven times in this particular film. It has a running length of ninety-four minutes. So last night while watching it, she heard fuck, or a derivative thereof, spoken every one and a half minutes, give or take a few seconds. But if my saying fuck offended her, then I'm fucking sorry.”

“Humans are amphibians...half spirit and half animal...as spirits they belong to the eternal world, but as animals they inhabit time. This means that while their spirit can be directed to an eternal object, their bodies, passions, and imaginations are in continual change, for to be in time, means to change. Their nearest approach to constancy, therefore, is undulation--the repeated return to a level from which they repeatedly fall back, a series of troughs and peaks.”

“the not-so-bookish librarian was half angel, half she-devil, so sayeth the rumor mill.”

“But the Wild is the Wild, and motherhood is motherhood, at all times fiercely protective whether in the Wild or out of it.”