He knows that there's no better way in the world to aggravate somebody who's trying to make it hard for you than by acting like you're not bothered.

To be just without being mad (and the madder you get the madder you get), to be peaceful without being stupid, to be interested without being compulsive, to be happy without being hysterical... smoke grass.

It is bad to suppress laughter. It goes back down to your hips. Man, when you lose your laugh you lose your footing.

I lay in bed the night before the fishing trip and thought it over, about my being deaf, about the years of not letting on I heard what was said, and I wonder if I can ever act any other way again. But I remembered one thing: it wasn't me that started acting deaf; it was people that first started acting like I was too dumb to hear or see or say anything at all.

What makes people so impatient is what I can't figure; all the guy had to do was wait.

Memory whispers someplace in that jumbled machinery.

Billy here has been talkin' about slicin' his wrists again, so is there seven of you guys who'd like to join him and make it therapeutic?