I dont really know if its the right thing to do, making new life. Kids — A Wild Sheep Chase

"I was twenty-one at the time, about to turn twenty-two. No prospect of graduating soon, and yet no reason to quit school. Caught in the most curiously depressing circumstances. For months Id been stuck, unable to take one step in any new direction. The world kept moving on; I alone was at a standstill. In the autumn, everything took on a desolate cast, the colors swiftly fading before my eyes. The sunlight, the smell of the grass, the faintest patter of rain, everything got on my nerves."

"So it was that my most impressionable years of boyhood were spent gazing at not a whale, but a whales penis. Whenever I tired of strolling through the chill aisles of the aquarium, Id steal off to my place on the bench of the high-ceilinged stillness of the exhibition room and spend hours on end there contemplating this whales penis."

"“What’s more, you’re loads better than you think you are.” “So why is it I get to thinking that way?” I puzzled. “That’s because you’re only half-living.” she said briskly. “The other half is still untapped somewhere.”"

"“Sheep hurt my father, and through my father, sheep have also hurt me.”"

"There are symbolic dreams—dreams that symbolize some reality. Then there are symbolic realities—realities that symbolize a dream. Symbols are what you might call honorary town councilors of the worm universe. In the worm universe, there is nothing unusual about a dairy cow seeking a pair of pliers. A cow is bound to get her pliers sometimes. It has nothing to do with me. Yet the fact that the cow chose me to obtain her pliers changes everything."

"I dont know, theres something about you. Say theres an hourglass: the sands about to run out. Someone like you can always be counted on to turn the thing over."