“Who stunned the dirt into noise?
Ask the mole, he knows.”

“Childhood feels so permanent, like it's the entire world, and then one day it's over and you're shoveling wet dirt onto your father's coffin, stunned at the impermanence of everything.”

“He who sleeps in continual noise is wakened by silence […]”

“My friend has a baby. I’m recording all the noises he makes so later I can ask him what he meant.”

“"If there's a buzzing-noise, somebody's making a buzzing-noise, and the only reason for making a buzzing-noise that I know of is because you're a bee."
Then he thought another long time, and said: "And the only reason for being a bee that I know of is making honey."
And then he got up, and said: "And the only reason for making honey is so I can eat it." So he began to climb the tree.”

“He who establishes his argument by noise and command shows that his reason is weak.”

“He who can listen to the music in the midst of noise can achieve great things.”

“He whose dirt it is must keep it that it may not trespass.”

“Do you love me?" he asked.
I fell silent.
"For the rest of it is glitter and noise," he said. "At the heart of it all is love. You make that choice, and you go forward from there.”

“You teachers are all alike, dishing out crap and expecting us to swallow it and then give it back to you, nice and neat, with a place in it for the mark to go in. But you're even phonier than the others because you put on this act — being a dame you know how — and you stand there pretending that you give a damn. Who you kidding?
We're dirt to you, just like you're dirt to the fatheads and whistle-blowers who run this jail, and they're dirt to the swindlers and horn-tooters who run the school system.”