"We are on strike, we, the men of the mind.We are on strike against self-immolation. We are on strike against the creed of unearned rewards and unrewarded duties. We are on strike against the dogma that the pursuit of one's happiness is evil. We are on strike against the doctrine that life is guilt."

"Lettie shrugged. “Nobody actually looks like what they really are on the inside. You don’t. I don’t. People are much more complicated than that. It’s true of everybody."

"The Supreme Court has in place a legal structure which protects abortion rights in this country, and something has got to be done to change that before we can put in place truly meaningful protection for the unborn."

"And I saw the sax line-up that he had behind him and I thought, I'm going to learn the saxophone. When I grow up, I'm going to play in his band. So I sort of persuaded my dad to get me a kind of a plastic saxophone on the hire purchase plan."

"I appear at times merry and in good heart, talk, too, before others quite reasonably, and it looks as if I felt, too, God knows how well within my skin. Yet the soul maintains its deathly sleep and the heart bleeds from a thousand wounds."

"I have the feeling when I write poetry that I'm doing what I'm supposed to do. You don't think about whether you're going to get money or fame you just do it."

"There were a lot of things he could say. 'Son of a bitch!' would have been a good one. Or he could say, 'Welcome to civilization!' He could have said, 'Laugh this one off!' He might have said, 'Fetch!' But he didn’t, because if he had said any of those things then he’d have known that what he had just done was murder."

"I believe it went like this—and stop me if I’m wrong, Mousey: ‘Listen, we may not be our own continent and everything, but we have a big country over in America too."