“You get tragedy where the tree, instead of bending, breaks.”

“And I won't break and I won't bend,
But someday soon we'll sail away
To innocence and the bitter end.
And I won't break and I won't bend,
And with the last breath we ever take
We're gonna get back to the simple life again.”

“It is funnier to bend things than to break them.”

“So as not to feel the horrible burden of time that breaks your back and bends you to the earth, be endlessly drunk.”

“Directly the mulberry tree begins to make you circle, break off. Pelt the tree with laughter.”

“Drunkenness is the vice of a good constitution or of a bad memory—of a constitution so treacherously good that it never bends till it breaks; or of a memory that recollects the pleasures of getting intoxicated, but forgets the pains of getting sober.”

“It took untold generations to get you where you are. A little gratitude might be in order. If you’re going to insist on bending the world to your way, you better have your reasons.”

“Their closeness wouldn't break, but it would bend and stretch into a new shape.”

“Make it bend — trees are flexible, so they don’t snap. Scar it, give it a twisted branch — perfect trees don’t exist. Nothing is perfect. Flaws are interesting. Be the tree.”

“We like rather to dream of a body of young men as a live thing, as a tree where all the branches are nourished by a single sap, and where each part is meaningless and incomplete except in connection with its fellows. You may lop away the dead branches, you may bend the trunk, you may dig about it and water it; but leave it to assume its own form, do not constrain the peculiar roots, or you will have a crippled, gnarled monster, and no tree.”