"His aunt Louisa asked him if he had made peace with God, and he replied, 'I did not know we had ever quarreled'."

On the death and dying of Henry David Thoreau.

"Knowledge is important, but much more important is the use toward which it is put. This depends on the heart and mind of the one who uses it."

"It was a - an obstacle. A disability. An injury, not just to his brain, but to his thinking."

"People acted, in short, by projecting their desires. Well - but of course. Wasn't that the point?"

"Amazing how quickly people developed sets of habits. They could not do without them, Frank had concluded. Even his improvised life was full of them. It might be said that now he had an array of habits that he chose from, a kind of menu."

"All part of the newly secure environment as envisioned in the Homeland Security acts. That these people had chosen a Nazi title for their enterprise was presumably more a tribute to their ignorance and stupidity than to any evil intent. Nevertheless it was not reassuring."

"Every day people come to me because I've got some power, and I watch them debase themselves or go silly in some way. I see them go corrupt right before my eyes. It's depressing. It's like having the Midas touch in reverse, where everything you touch turns to shit."

"And yet why did things live? What got them through it really? What made them make all these efforts, when death lay in wait at the end for every one of them?"

"An excess of reason is itself a form of madness."

"But they are not taught to think! In fact they're taught not to think. And they are stupid to begin with."