“Seize the moment of excited curiosity on any subject to solve your doubts for if you let it pass, the desire may never return, and you may remain in ignorance.”

“My old black cat, he passed away this morning. He never knew what a heartache was. Woke up late and he danced till noon. If questioned why, answered just because. He never spoke much, preferring silence. Eight lost lives was all he had.”

“I may not have all the education but I do have common sense, and I know how to treat people.”

“A person may cause evil to others not only by his actions but by his inactions, and in either case he is justly accountable to them for the injury”

“Time dims memory. But not that kind. Somewhere in a corner of the brain, one little cell never forgets. It keeps the song that, heard again, recreates the room, the person, the moment. It preserves the phrase or the laugh or the gesture that resurrects a friend long gone. It knows precisely where you were and what you were doing when you heard about Pearl Harbor if you're old enough, or Kennedy's assassination, or Martin Luther King's, or the Challenger explosion. Every detail is frozen in memory, despite all the years. It keeps the innocuous question, too. The question that sometime later, when all the synapses are working, produces the epiphany, the moment when you're driving along and you realize that finally you understand. And why did it take you so long?”

“I will never let myself be caught like that—any marriage I make will be my own. A choice. A free one.”

“Life is like a maze of doors and then all open on the side you're on. Just keep on pushing hard, boy, try as you may...you're going to wind up where you started from.”