“Principally I played pedants, idiots, old fathers, and drunkards. As you see, I had a narrow escape from becoming a professor.”

“Adam and Eve had many advantages, but the principal one was that they escaped teething.”

“Every big wave rider can tell you of his narrow escapes from death.”

“You see the dilemma?” Ham asked. “I see an idiot,” Breeze mumbled.”

“I started lessons when I was three and a half. In the beginning I just played a little but, when I was five, I played my first recital, and from that point my parents had high hopes for me; especially my father.”

“I used to believe my father about everything but then I had children myself & now I see how much stuff you make up just to keep yourself from going crazy.”

“I had to smile at the man. I mean, you have to smile at idiots and children.”

“I see the whole episode in my memory as if it were a very crisply photographed black and white movie. Directed by Bergman perhaps. We are playing ourselves in the movie version. If only we could escape from always having to play ourselves!”

“I was three and a half years old when my father brought home a toy fiddle," playing "with which I am very happy fancies himself a street musician… I thought not and could not be happier than go from house to house with a violin."”

“My father liked me, when I wasna being an idiot. And he loved me, too -- enough to beat the daylights out of me when I was being an idiot. Jamie Fraser”