“A dream does not die on its own. A dream is vanquished by the choices ordinary people make about real things in their own lives…”

“Dream no small dream; it lacks magic. Dream large. Then make the dream real.”

“For a city or a people to be truly free they must have the secure right, without economic, political or police pressure, to make their own choice and to live their own lives.”

“Then I let the stories live
inside my head, again and again
until the real world fades back
into cricket lullabies
and my own dreams.”

“That was the evil of Dr. Bertram Waters: the perpetuation of hopeless dreams, compounded by the betrayal of those dreams to make his own a reality.”

“The nurse is the night
To wake to, to die in: and the day I live,
The world and its life are her dreams.”

“The nurse is the night
To wake to, to die in: and the day I live,
The world and its life are her dreams.”

“Every person has to live his or her own life and then make the choice to share it with other people.”

“Yes, the novel is about concrete living relationships, a man's love for a woman, a woman's betrayal of that love. But it is also about wealth, its great attraction as well as its destructive power, the carelessness that comes with it, and, yes, it is about the American dream, a dream of power and wealth, the beguiling light of Daisy's house and the port of entry to America. It is also about loss, about the perishability of dreams once they are transformed into hard reality. It is the longing, its immateriality, that makes the dream pure.”

“It's one of the things that makes us different than they are, Harry. The blood on their hands does not make it right to bloody my own. My choices are measured against my own soul. Not against the stains on theirs.”