“Since Switzerland has nothing else to identify it…and since both its national products, snow and chocolate, melt, the cuckoo clock was invented solely in order to give tourists something solid to remember it by.”

“If snow melts down to water, does it still remember being snow?”

“The duke had a mind that ticked like a clock and, like a clock, it regularly went cuckoo.”

“I'm Switzerland; neutral as can be, and also with great chocolate.”

“In Italy, for thirty years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder and bloodshed - they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo Da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love and five hundred years of democracy and peace, and what did they produce? The cuckoo clock!”

“In Italy, for thirty years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love, they had five hundred years of democracy and peace - and what did they produce? The cuckoo clock.”

“It would be absurd if we did not understand both angels and devils, since we invented them.”

“He rolled his eyes. "First, my Dad's Korean and my mom was Swedish. Second, I totally suck at math. I don't like cuckoo clocks or skiing or fancy chocolate either."
I sputtered a laugh. "I think that's Swiss.”

“Since they were little, wishing on the first star of the evening, they both understood this: the most exciting game in life is to invent yourself.”

“Tourists went on holidays while travellers did something else. They travelled.”