“Maybe life is a process of trading hopes for memories.”

“Death is ordinary. Behold it, subtract its patterns and lessons from those of the death that weapons bring, and maybe the residue will show what violence is.”

“But how could he explain anything to them, when they understood good but not goodness, strong but not strength, black but not blackness? Give us bread! the Savages cried. Heal us!They were frightened by the consecrated wine, believing that the Black-Gowns drank human blood. This is the blood of JESUS, said Pere Masse. Was that a man? they asked.He was the SON OF GOD, but He became a man to die for us. In memory of his sacrifice, we drink His blood. At this they drew back and whispered in their language, with many terrified glances. ”

“I studied Comparative Literature at Cornell. Structuralism was real big then. The idea of reading and writing as being this language game. There's a lot of appeal to that. It's nice to think of it as this playful kind of thing. But I think that another way to look at it is "Look, I just want to be sincere. I want to write something and make you feel something and maybe you will go out and do something." And it seems that the world is in such bad shape now that we don't have time to do nothing but language games. That's how it seems to me.”

“It sure if terrific to be in the back seat of a car full of all the people in your affinity group, and as you zip down the center of the road the radio is going boodeley-boodeley-boo in some bluegrass heart song to open space, and, whoopee, you’re hugging all the committed girls who love you just as the boys love you but even more so, maybe, because Bug never forgot that a Swiss army knife, for instance, does everything well and nothing excellently; and to do something excellently a good navy surplus kelp-slitting blade is far superior to a thousand sawtoothed frogman’s specials; and a gun is worth a thousand knives; and a good friend is worth a thousand guns; and ten minutes’ bored talk about the weather with any girl is worth a thousand friends at your back on the Great Trek of 1836, at least at that time in his life, perhaps because until he joined the affinity group none of his friends had ever been girls; but now everyone was his friend, especially the girls (but he only thought that; he didn’t say it, didn’t want anyone to claim that he was a sexist).”

“I do most sincerely believe that ethical behavior as we best construe it ought to be followed by us throughout our lives, even on the last day of life, and that if we have made a bad or even evil choice we are not barred (or excused) thereby from continuing to live the last moments or years given to us in whatever way we consider to be most right.”

“So even that doesn’t make you happy? What about your Seventh Symphony? At least it rallied people. Once you told me how alive you felt then; you said you gave it your all— Didn’t you learn in school, he demanded in a hateful voice, that Ivan the Terrible, having coaxed his architect into, so to speak, putting the very best of himself into building Polrovsky Cathedral, afterwards put out his eyes? Anyway, things are so much easier in our century. LIFE HAS BECOME MORE JOYFUL!”