The one sure way I can dishonor myself is by worrying about my reputation.

I can write faster on a typewriter than you can on a computer. I do 120 words a minute, and you can't do that on a computer.

These are all novels, all about people that never existed, the people that read them it makes them unhappy with their own lives. Makes them want to live in other ways they can never really be.

[He] was always here to offer cups of good clear Walden Pond, or shout down the deep well of Shakespeare and listen, with satisfaction, for echoes. Here the lion and the hartebeest lay together, here the jackass became a unicorn.

You're not like the others. I've seen a few; I know. When I talk, you look at me. When I said something about the moon, you looked at the moon, last night. The others would never do that. The others would walk off and leave me talking. Or threaten me. No one has time any more for anyone else. You're one of the few who put up with me. That's why I think it's so strange you're a fireman, it just doesn't seem right for you, somehow.

God, how we get our fingers in each other's clay. That's friendship, each playing the potter to see what shapes we can make of each other.

I spent three days a week for 10 years educating myself in the public library, and it's better than college.