[Ayres] was our city because we were building it. That's how I felt when I walked around town.

True terror is to wake up one morning and discover that your high school class is running the country.

We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful what we pretend to be.

There is a tragic flaw in our precious constitution, and I don't know what can be done to fix it. This is it: Only nut cases want to be president.

I want to stand as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all the kinds of things you can't see from the center.

He didn't look like a soldier at all. He looked like a filthy flamingo.

Any reviewer who expresses rage and loathing for a novel is preposterous. He or she is like a person who has put on full armor and attacked a hot fudge sundae.

Perhaps I am the turtle, able to live simply anywhere, even underwater for short periods, with my home on my back.

About astrology and palmistry: they are good because they make people vivid and full of possibilities. They are communism at its best. Everybody has a birthday and almost everybody has a palm.

We are here on Earth to fart around. Don't let anybody tell you any different.

Enjoy your body, use it every way you can. Don’t be afraid of it, or what other people think of it, it’s the greatest instrument you’ll ever own.

Compassion crowns the soul with its truest victory.

The dull mind, once arriving at an inference that flatters the desire, is rarely able to retain the impression that the notion from which the inference started was purely problematic.

What is irritating about love is that it is a crime that requires an accomplice.

The fairest thing in nature, a flower, still has its roots in earth and manure.

All the freaky people make the beauty of the world.

You’ll miss the best things if you keep your eyes shut.

Marry for Love, an Heroick Action, which makes a mighty noise in the World, partly because of its rarity, and partly in regard of its extravagancy.

Think what we would have missed if we had never ... used a mobile phone or surfed the Net -- or, to be honest, listened to other people talking about surfing the Net.

Bullshit," Salander said again. "Gottfried isn't the only kid who was ever mistreated. That doesn't give him the right to murder women. He made that choice himself. And the same is true of Martin.

The suicide bomber who blows up Israeli children cannot transform himself into a martyr. The Palestinian problem is not an Islamic problem.