“A lot of people don't want to make their own decisions. They're too scared. It's much easier to be told what to do.”

“Kids are people, too, and once they start getting older, they make their own decisions. There's only so much you can do.”

“People don't expect too much from literature. They just want to know they're not alone with being confused.”

“When the veil drops, victims face financial wreckage… A lot of people call me, and they just want to talk, tell me what happened. But they don't want to go forward. They're too embarrassed. They don't want to see their name in the papers.”

“Meg, don't you think you'd make a better adjustment to life if you faced facts?"
I do face facts," Meg said.
They're lots easier to face than people, I can tell you.”

“There's lots of people—this town wouldn't hold them;
Who don't know much excepting what's told them.”

“Don't do what you want. Do what you don't want. Do what you're trained not to want. Do the things that scare you the most.”

“You don't want to write a big comment that tells others how to make a change they might want to make, because you don't know what change they're going to want to make. Better to have the attitude that you can't help future programmers make their changes. All you can do is make it easy for them to understand what you were trying to do. And it will be easiest for them to understand what you were trying to do if you were very careful to not try to do too much.”

“Young people don't always do what they're told, but if they can pull it off and do something wonderful, sometimes they escape punishment.”

“People tend the take everything too seriously. Especially themselves. Yep. And that's probably what makes 'em scared and hurt so much of the time. Life is too serious to take that seriously.”