"Like most North Americans of his generation, Hal tends to know way less about why he feels certain ways about the objects and pursuits he's devoted to than he does about the objects and pursuits themselves. It's hard to say for sure whether this is even exceptionally bad, this tendency."
"I do things like get in a taxi and say, "The library, and step on it."
"We are all dying to give our lives away to something, maybe. God or Satan, politics or grammar, topology or philately (...) To games or needles, to some other person."
"How is there freedom to choose if one does not learn how to choose?"
"The truth will set you free. But not until it is finished with you."
"This is why they started us here so young: to give ourselves away before the age when the questions 'why' and 'to what' grow real beaks and claws."