When a child first catches adults out -- when it first walks into his grave little head that adults do not always have divine intelligence, that their judgments are not always wise, their thinking true, their sentences just -- his world falls into panic desolation. The gods are fallen and all safety gone. And there is one sure thing about the fall of gods: they do not fall a little; they crash and shatter or sink deeply into green muck. It is a tedious job to build them up again; they never quite shine. And the child's world is never quite whole again. It is an aching kind of growing. East Of Eden

The most miserable mortals are they that deliver themselves up to their palates, or to their lusts; the pleasure is short, and turns presently nauseous, and the end of it is either shame or repentance. Day's Collacon

“A minute later she asked me if I loved her. I told her it didn’t mean anything but that I didn’t think so.” Stranger

Training is everything. The peach was once a bitter almond; cauliflower is nothing but cabbage with a college education. The Tragedy of Pudd'nhead Wilson