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E.L. Doctorow once said that "writing a novel is like driving a car at night. You can see only as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way."

"I think you are a self-sabotager," Ginika said.

"Right. So you're saying that actually doing this straight is the least Florida thing we could be doing."

"I am in agreement with His Holiness the Dalai Lama that 'whether a person is a religious believer does not matter much. Far more important is that they be a good human being.”'

Suddenly I realised I was the only male on a table of high-spirited females, assorted ages forty-something to eighty-two. One of them raised a glass. ‘Well, Peter, blessed art thou amongst women,’ which really is an excellent joke if you know your Hail Mary.

"Our ship had not been many days in the harbor of Nukuheva before I came to the determination of leaving her. That my reasons for resolving to take this step were numerous and weighty, may be inferred from the fact that I chose rather to risk my fortunes among the savages of the island than to endure another voyage on board the Dolly."

"'The world, we are told, was made especially for man--a presumption not supported by all the facts,' wrote John Muir in 1916."

"If you're looking for something, immerse yourself in its opposite. Then go as far as you can."

"We talk about the dignity of history. It is a bookish phrase for which I have the extremest disrespect. There is no dignity yet in human history. It would be pure comedy, if it were not so often tragic, so frequently dismal, generally dishonourable and occasionally quite horrible."

"'It feels like there ain't no love no more.' I left McNeal's porch and started my car. The radio was tuned to NPR and A Prarie Home Companion came warbling out of my speakers. I stared through the windshield at the little boy in the diaper playing amid the ruins, reached over and switched it off."

"Hmmm! it smells like elves!" thought Bilbo, and he looked up at the stars. They were burning bright and blue. Just then there came a burst of song like laughter in the trees..."

"Humanity today is like a waking dreamer, caught between the fantasies of sleep and the choas of the real world. The mind seeks but cannot find the precise place and hour. We have created a Star Wars civilization, with Stone Age emotions, medieval institutions, and god-like technology. We thrash about. We are terribly confused by the mere fact of our existence, and a danger to ourselves and to the rest of life."

"Not only can we find what we need faster, but traditional authorities cannot maintain themselves by insisting that we have to go to them. The miscellaneous order is not transforming only business. It is changing how we think the world itself is organized and--perhaps more important--who we think has the authority to tell us so."

"Sometimes, I doubt your commitment to Sparkle Motion!" - Kitty, Donnie Darko (p. 61)

"Sometimes, I doubt your commitment to Sparkle Motion!" - Kitty, Donnie Darko

'...cultural anthropology, "a science that was mostly poetry," as Kurt understood it, yet it was an opportunity to examine critically "every object and idea which has been shaped by men and women and children." (p. 86)