... you must not expect to find that people understand what they do.

No one who is young is ever going to be old.

In literary criticism the critic has no choice but to make over the victim of his attention into something the size and shape of himself.

I got you to look after me, and you got me to look after you, and that's why.

The direction of a big act will warp history, but probably all acts do the same in their degree, down to a stone stepped over in the path or the breath caught at sight of a pretty girl or a fingernail nicked in the garden soil.

He drank too much when he could get it, ate too much when it was there, talked too much all the time.

He never forgot anything but he never bothered to arrange his memories. -Hazel, Cannery Row