For all the insularity of the old guard, Pittsburgh was always an open and democratic town.

The world knew you before you knew the world.

Admire the world for never ending on you -- as you would an opponent, without taking your eyes away from him, or walking away.

It would seem that emotions are the curse, not death-emotions that appear to have developed upon a few freaks as a special curse from Malevolence. All right then. It is our emotions that are amiss. We are freaks, the world is fine, and let us all go have lobotomies to restore us to a natural state. We can leave the library then, go back to the creek lobotomized, and live on its banks as untroubled as any muskrat or reed. You first.

How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives. What we do with this hour and with that one, is what we are doing.

You have to take pains in a memoir not to hang on the reader's arm, like a drunk, and say, 'And then I did this and it was so interesting.

An Inuit hunter asked the local missionary priest: If I did not know about God and sin, would I go to hell? No, said the priest, not if you did not know. Then why, asked the Inuit earnestly, did you tell me?