“-A Word On Statistics-Out of every hundred people, those who always know better:fifty-two.Unsure of every step:almost all the rest. Ready to help,if it doesn't take long:forty-nine. Always good,because they cannot be otherwise:fourwell, maybe five. Able to admire without envy:eighteen. Led to errorby youth (which passes):sixty, plus or minus. Those not to be messed with:four-and-forty. Living in constant fearof someone or something:seventy-seven. Capable of happiness:twenty-some-odd at most. Harmless alone,turning savage in crowds:more than half, for sure. Cruelwhen forced by circumstances:it's better not to know,not even approximately. Wise in hindsight:not many morethan wise in foresight. Getting nothing out of life except things:thirty(though I would like to be wrong). Balled up in painand without a flashlight in the dark:eighty-three, sooner or later. Those who are just:quite a few, thirty-five. But if it takes effort to understand:three. Worthy of empathy:ninety-nine. Mortal:one hundred out of one hundreda figure that has never varied yet.”

“Of one hundred persons who take up the spiritual life, eighty turn out to be charlatans, fifteen insane, and only five, maybe, get a glimpse of the real truth. Therefore beware.”

“Last year in the U.S. alone more than nine hundred thousand people were reported missing and not found...That's out of three hundred million, total population. That breaks down to about one person in three hundred and twenty-five vanishing. Every year....Maybe it's a coincidence, but it's almost the same loss ratio experienced by herd animals on the African savannah to large predators.”

“Though one should live a hundred years without wisdom and control, yet better, indeed, is a single day’s life of one who is wise and meditative.”

“It dawned upon everybody that Aggie, at perhaps a hundred and sixty pounds and five feet nine and a half, was, as Beth later said, 'dynamite in the physical culture department.”

“The technology involved in making anything invisible is so infinitely complex that nine hundred and ninety-nine billion, nine hundred and ninety-nine million, nine hundred and ninety-nine thousand, nine hundred and ninety-nine times out of a trillion it is much simpler and more effective just to take the thing away and do without it.”