I can't tell if you're serious or not,' said the driver. I won't know myself until I find out if life is serious or not,' said Trout. 'It's dangerous, I know, and it can hurt a lot. That doesn't necessarily mean it's serious, too.

All this happened, more or less. The war parts, anyway, are pretty much true.

There is no order in the world around us, we must adapt ourselves to the requirements of chaos instead.

I want to stand as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all the kinds of things you can't see from the center.

You meet saints everywhere. They can be anywhere. They are people behaving decently in an indecent society.

The people who taught really knew their stuff. My chemistry teacher, Frank Wade, was actually a chemist. I was so lucky in a number of ways.

I think William Shakespeare was the wisest human being I ever heard of. To be perfectly frank, though, that's not saying much. We are impossibly conceited animals, and actually dumb as heck. Ask any teacher. You don't even have to ask a teacher. Ask anybody. Dogs and cats are smarter than we are.