“How many neighbors ignoring Jolly for her ignorance and bad luck could go down on their knees and save their kid from choking to death this afternoon while the world was going on outside in the sunshine?”

“You ever laughed so hardnobody in the world could hurt you for a minute,no matter what they tried to do to you?”

“I sure would like to get kissed.How would that feel on my mouth,How different would I be after,a changed climate down in my insides?”

“Some people make a bad bed, they just have to lie in it.”

“While I fold laundry I memorize things for school, dates of wars: French ones, African ones, Russian ones, battles of all ugly kinds. It's a shame to have us hopeful young students learn these horrible things. Exactly the kind of behaving they have told us over and over again not to do is what the history class is full of, full-grown adults making these wars: killing each other for land, for religions, for greed and more greed, Why bother to have children and educate them and invent things to make their lives better, just to send them off to war and get slaughtered?”

“Rise to the occassion which is life!”

“I tell you this because books for young readers are so often written about that very moment: the moment of the fork. The moment the old man cannot return to.”