“When I was a young man, my father told me not to get into politics, because it was dirty, and would destroy me.”

“Let me tell you, young man—the dirty little secret of democracy is that just because you get a vote, doesn’t mean you get your choice.”

“I don’t fear death. I remember my last meeting with my father when he told me, "You know, tonight when I will be killed, my mother and my father will be waiting for me." It makes me weepy … but I don’t think it can happen unless God wants it to happen because so many people have tried to kill me.”

“My father told me once that the most important thing every man should know is what he would die for.”

“Here was what Kilgore Trout cried out to me in my father's voice: "Make me young, make me young, make me young!"”

“... My best friend [as a young girl] made this mole on my face, because she would get in a fight with me and scratch me -- by the third time the scab came off the [mole] was there...”

“I love writing about my job because I loved it, and it was a particularly interesting one when I was a young man. It was like holidays with pay to me.”

“But I am poor, and my name ends with a soft vowel, and they hate me and my father, and my father's father, and they would have my blood and put me down, but they are old now, dying in the sun and in the hot dust of the road, and I am young and full of hope and love for my country and my times, and when I say Greaser to you it is not my heart that speaks, but the quivering of an old wound, and I am ashamed of the terrible thing I have done.”

“Losing Bogey was horrible, obviously. Because he was young. And because he gave me my life. I wouldn't have had a — I don't know what would have happened to me if I hadn't met him — I would have had a completely different kind of life. He changed me, he gave me everything. And he was an extraordinary man.”

“When I was young, I asked my priest how to get to heaven and still protect yourself from all the evil in the world. He told me what God told His children;'You are sheep among wolves, be wise as the serpent, yet innocent as doves.”