"Nobody can work with the poor and not fall over Karl Marx from time to time — or just fall over the Bible, as far as that goes."

"For maybe a hundred thousand years or more, grownups have been waving tangles of string in their children's faces.""Um."Newt remained curled in the chair. He held out his painty hands as though a cat's cradle were strung between them. "No wonder kids grow up crazy. A cat's cradle is nothing but a bunch of X's between somebody's hands, and little kids look and look and look at all those X's...""And?""No damn cat, and no damn cradle."

"Poo-tee-weet?"

"I pity the Jews trying to get through life with only half a Bible. That's like trying to get from here to San Francisco with a road map that stops at Dubuque, Iowa."Grandfather Wills , Hocus Pocus"

"The fortifications have never been attacked, nor has any sane man ever proposed any reason why they should be attacked. They have never defended anything. Fourteen hundred persons are said to have died while building them. Of these fourteen hundred, about half are said to have been executed in public for substandard zeal."

"Oh," said Castle. "Him." He shrugged. "People have to talk about something just to keep their voice boxes in working order, so they'll have good voice boxes in case there's ever anything really meaningful to say."

"Son,' my father said to me, 'someday this will all be yours."

"Listen. All great literature is about what a bummer it is to be a human being."

"The picture is supposed to go up just inside the front door, so it's the first thing you see when you come in. It's green. It's about the size of a barn door. It has one vertical orange stripe, and it's called 'The Temptation of Saint Anthony.' Mother wrote a letter to the paper, saying the picture was an insult to the memory of Father, and to the memory of every serious artist who ever lived."