They tell him that there is no why, since the moment simply is and since all of them are trapped in the moment, like bugs in amber.

When I used to teach creative writing, I would tell the students to make their characters want something right away.

You become who you pretend to be.

Moderate giftedness has been made worthless by the printing press and radio and television and satellites and all that. A moderately gifted person who would have been a community treasure a thousand years ago has to give up, has to go into some other line of work, since modern communications put him or her into daily competition with nothing but world's champions.

I love you, Eliza,” I said. She thought about it. “No,” she said at last, “I don’t like it.” “Why not?” I said. “It’s as though you were pointing a gun at my head,” she said. “It’s just a way of getting somebody to say something they probably don’t mean. What else can I say, or anybody say, but, ‘I love you, too’?

Trout was petrified there on Forty-second Street. It had given him a life not worth living, but I had also given him an iron will to live. This was a common combination on the planet Earth.

I have had all I can stand of not taking myself seriously.