“It was one of those rare times of shared happiness, of perfect contentment. We had a feeling of expectation, that what was already wonderful would only get better and better as time went on. These ...”

“The two women looked at me as if I were the Messiah returning with their personal salvations sealed in separate envelopes.”

“Over time, a commitment to challenging, focused work and leisure produces not only better daily experience, but also a more complex, interesting person: the long-range benefit of the focused life. ...”

“Attention is the beginning of devotion.”

“You dont have to worry about getting the attention of others when youre good at what you do.”

“Jesus, what a nuisance it was, being desperate to stay alive.”

“It's like it ain't so much what a fellow does, but it's the way the majority of folks is looking at him when he does it.”

“The Thing about people who wanted to show you things was that sometimes their interest in granting you knowledge was laced with a little voyeuristic sadism. They were waiting for the Look or the Re...”

“But I remember one thing: it wasn't me that started acting deaf, it was people that first started acting like I was too dumb to hear or see or say anything at all.”