“You’d be surprised what a person can live with,” Dan said.”

“One of the greatest discoveries a person makes, one of their great surprises, is to find they can do what they were afraid they couldn't do.”

“I am an artist. Gardening is my graffiti. A graffiti artist beautifies walls; I beautify parkways and yards. I treat the garden as a piece of cloth and the plants and the trees are the embellishment of that cloth. You’d be surprised what soil can do if you let it be your canvas.”

“What surprises me about humanity is that in the end such a narrow range of plights defines our moral lives.”

“There is an excellent rule to follow; quarrel, not with the person who said the things (you can never be sure they were said), but with the person who has told of their being said.”

“But chance runs like a river through all our lives, and being prepared for surprise is the best we can do.”

“A person starts to live when he can live outside himself.”

“When the dead are done with the living, the living can go on to other things," Franny said. "What about the dead?" I asked. "Where do we go?”

“It gets harder all the time, Bev Shaw once said. Harder, yet easier. One gets used to things getting harder; one ceases to be surprised that what used to be hard as hard can be grows harder yet.”

“There is only one kind of person, Phædrus said, who accepts or rejects the mythos in which he lives. And the definition of that person, when he has rejected the mythos, Phædrus said, is "insane."”