“They have been taught that if you are sunny, cheery, sincere, group-adjusted, popular, the world is yours, including barbecue pits, charge plates, diaper service, percale sheets, friends for dinner, washer-dryer combinations, color slides of the kiddies on the home projector, and eternal whimsical romance — with crinkly smiles and Rock Hudson dialogue. So they all come smiling and confident and unskilled into a technician’s world, and in a few years they learn that it is all going to be grinding and brutal and hateful and precarious. These are the slums of the heart.”

“You have to learn to smile through your pain. Sometimes it’s all we got.”

“I suppose you are going home to see your families and friends. For the service you have done in this great struggle in which we are engaged I present you sincere thanks for myself and the country.”

“She smiled, a moving childish smile that was like all the lost youth in the world.”

“Belinda smiled, and all the world was gay.”

“But by that time you do not much care whether she smiles or frowns. Why could she not have smiled when her smiles would have filled you with ecstasy? Everything comes too late in this world.”

“In Kilanga, people knew nothing of things they might have had - a Frigidaire? a washer-dryer combination? Really, they'd sooner imagine a tree that could pull up its feet and go bake bread. It didn't occur to them to feel sorry for themselves.”

“When you came you cried and everybody smiled with joy; when you go smile and let the world cry for you.”

“Count your age by friends, not years. Count your life by smiles, not tears.”

“I have been a vegetarian all my life, as has my family, including all my dogs. Even when my father, a nonvegetarian, comes home for dinner, he has to eat vegetarian fare.”