“Long-haired preachers come out every night,
Try to tell you what's wrong and what's right;
But when asked how 'bout something to eat
They will answer with voices so sweet:

You will eat, bye and bye,
In that glorious land above the sky;
Work and pray, live on hay,
You'll get pie in the sky when you die.”

“Workingmen of all countries, unite,
Side by side we for freedom will fight:
When the world and its wealth we have gained
To the grafters we'll sing this refrain:

You will eat, bye and bye,
When you've learned how to cook and to fry
Chop some wood, 'twill do you good,
And you'll eat in the sweet bye and bye.”

“There may be "pie in the sky when you die" but how the pie is dished out on the ground has considerable existential relevance.”

“It tells you how to boil water. What expression to wear when you are eating eggs. How to starve. When to eat. What your first meal should be. What your last meal should be. It says more about death than eating and more about living than cooking.”

“You'll eat hamburgers year after year and live in dusty, vermin-infested apartments and hotels, but every morning you'll see the mighty sun, the eternal blue of the sky, and the streets will be full of sleek women you never will possess, and the hot semitropical nights will reek of romance you'll never have, but you'll still be in paradise, boys, in the land of sunshine.”

“I’ll give you one thing to mull over, though. If the body’s such a valueless piece of pork, and we’ll all meet each other in the sweet bye and bye, and so on, why’re you busting every gut you own to get back to your wife?”

“Remember, if this is your world, you're one of them, a teenager. You live in two worlds. You're with them, day in, day out, and you'll never know, Mac, what that does to your mind. Teenager forever. June will come and it’s bye-bye teacher, nice knowin' you, my sister's gonna be in your class in September. But there’s something else, Mac. In any classroom, something is always happening. They keep you on your toes. They keep your fresh. You'll never grow old, but the danger is you might have the mind of an adolescent forever. That's a real problem, Mac. You get used to talking to those kids on their level. Then when you go to a bar for a beer you forgot how to talk to your friends and they look at you. They look at your like you just arrived from another planet and they're right.”

“When you love something, you'll always come back to it. You'll always keep asking questions, and finding answers.”

“And sure, I know if you eat this way you'll die. So? If you don't eat this way you're still going to die. Why not die happy?”

“Ask yourself: What did I eat for breakfast today? What did I eat for dinner last night? You see how fast reality fades away?”