Before birth; yes, what time was it then? A time like now, and when they were dead, it would be still like now: these trees, that sky, this earth, those acorn seeds, sun and wind, all the same, while they, with dust-turned hearts, change only.

My yardstick is how somebody treats me.

New York is a diamond iceberg floating in river water.

Shoot, boy, the country's just fulla folks what knows everything, and don't understand nothing, just fullofem.

[T]he army of wrongness rampant in the world might as well march over me.

She sounds the way bananas taste.

Most people who become suddenly famous overnight will find that they lose practically eighty percent of their friends. Your old friends just can't stand it for some reason.