Virginia is the place, where, technologically speaking, they will burn people at the stake for possessing such things as toasters.

And there never was an apple, in Adam's opinion, that wasn't worth the trouble you got into for eating it.

The wise man knows when to keep silent. Only the fool tells all he knows.

You'll think this is a bit silly, but I'm a bit--well, I have a thing about birds." "What, a phobia?" "Sort of." "Well, that's the common term for an irrational fear of birds." "What do they call a rational fear of birds, then?

It may help to understand human affairs to be clear that most of the great triumphs and tragedies of history are caused, not by people being fundamentally good or fundamentally bad, but by people being fundamentally people.

She really was pretty, for a grown-up person, but when you are seven, beauty is an abstraction, not an imperative. I wonder what I would have done if she had smiled at me like that now: whether I would have handed my mind or my heart or my identify to her for the asking, as my father did.

Just remember, what the French say. No, probably not the French, they've got a president or something. The Brits, maybe, or the Swedes. You know what I mean?" "No, Matthew. What do they say?" "The king is dead, that's what they say. The king is dead. Long live the king.