With school turning out more runners, jumpers, racers, tinkerers, grabbers, snatchers, fliers, and swimmers instead of examiners, critics, knowers, and imaginative creators, the word 'intellectual,' of course, became the swear word it deserved to be.

The zipper displaces the button and a man lacks just that much time to think while dressing at dawn, a philosophical hour, and thus a melancholy hour.

When Douglas walked, his mind ran, when he ran, his mind walked.

Let me alone," said Mildred"Let you alone!" He almost cried out with laughter. "Letting you alone is easy, but how can I leave myself alone? That's what's wrong. We need not to be let alone. We need to be upset and stirred and bothered, once in a while, anyway. Nobody bothers anymore. Nobody thinks. Let a baby alone, why don't you? What would you have in twenty years? A savage, unable to think or talk--like us!

And the odd think in Dad's voice was the sound truth makes being said.

I think the reason my stories have been so successful is that I have a strong sense of metaphor.

Those who live in the best cliffs think they are better than us. That is always man's attitude when he has power.

It won't work,' Mr. Bentley continued, sipping his tea. 'No matter how hard you try to be what you once were, you can only be what you are here and now. Time hypnotizes. When you're nine, you think you've always been nine years old and will always be. When you're thirty, it seems you've always been balanced there on that bright rim of middle life. And then when you turn seventy, you are always and forever seventy. You're in the present, you're trapped in a young now or an old now, but there is no other now to be seen.

I think the only way we can grow and get on in this world is to accept the fact we're not perfect and live accordingly.