“I have a gift for enraging people, but if I ever bore you it will be with a knife.”

“Too often people think education is boring. Well, it’s not boring! And particularly, if you have people who can communicate with you and also, sometimes, information that experts can provide you. That’s why I always go with biologists or people who can educate me. I want to be educated all the time.”

“I seem to have excalibured this knife.”

“In other people's company I felt I was dull, gloomy, unwelcome, at once bored and boring…”

“Charlie, you’re one of the most gifted people I’ve ever known. And I don’t mean in terms of my other students. I mean in terms of anyone I’ve ever met.”

“Books! I dunno if I ever told you this, but books are the greatest gift one person can give another.”

“God help me if I ever injure my back," Clayton quipped.
"God help you if you ever turn it," Whitney snapped, "for there'll surely be some heartbroken papa or cuckolded husband ready with a knife--if I don't murder you first.”

“Christ … made the blood of the specialists and leading spirits, the representatives of the people boil with his battle-cry: "I", "I", "I"! and provoked the enraged counterblast: We, We, We!”

“… if I could give you just one gift ever for the rest of your life it would be this. Confidence. It would be the gift of Confidence. Either that or a scented candle.”

“I do understand. I understand that you are offered a loveliness and you vomit on it, that you have the gift of love given you such as few men have ever known and you throw on it the acid of your pride, your ugly twisted sense of importance.”