“He was the average mortal. It troubled him to get used to the world one way and then suddenly have it turn different.”

“He felt like a man who, chasing rainbows, has had one of them suddenly turn and bite him in the leg.”

“Yes, man is mortal, but that would be only half the trouble. The worst of it is that he's sometimes unexpectedly mortal - there's the trick!”

“Having a baby is like suddenly getting the world's worst roommate.”

“Round the birth of "Pickwick" broke one of those literary quarrels that were too common in the life of Dickens.... He turned people into mortal enemies whom he might have turned very easily into immortal jokes.”

“A smile is the best way to get away with trouble even if it’s a fake one.”

“The American Dream can come in many different ways for many different people. It doesn't have to come in the way they explain it to you. Now, the American Dream can come if a guy hits the lottery. Who in the world thought he would hit a lottery? That's the American Dream for him. But I look at it from day one, moving up the ladder, and moving up the ladder. Now you get to the top of the ladder and you have to look back. How did you get to that ladder? To me, that's the American Dream.”

“I would love to know more. What I know is troubling enough. And one thing that I do know is his having grown up in Kenya, his view of the Brits, for example, very different than the average American.”

“Would the world ever have been made if its maker had been afraid of making trouble? Making life means making
trouble. There’s only one way of escaping trouble; and that’s killing things.”

“We are different because our brain is wired differently. This causes us to perceive the world in different ways and have different values and priorities. Not better or worse - different.”