The Wind in the Willows: Gunnar Knapp

In The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame, Mole tells Rat that he has never been in a boat before.

"What?" cried the Rat, open-mouthed: "Never been in a -- you never -- well, I -- what have you been doing, then?

"Is it so nice as all that?" asked the Mole shyly, though he was quite prepared to believe it as he leant back in his seat and surveyed the cushions, the oars, the rowlocks, and all the fascinating fittings, and felt the boat sway lightly under him.

"Nice? It's the only thing," said the Water Rat solemnly, as he leant forward for his stroke. "Believe me, my young friend, there is nothing -- absolutely nothing -- half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats."

Angle of Repose: Scott Banks

In Angle of Repose, Wallace Stegner contrasts the utter silence of 1887 in an Idaho canyon with more modern times:

"1970 knows nothing about isolation and nothing about silence. In our quietest and loneliest hour the automatic ice-maker in the refrigerator will cluck and drop an ice cube, the automatic dishwasher will sigh through its changes, a plane will drone over, the nearest freeway will vibrate the air. Red and white lights will pass in the sky, lights will shine along highways and glance off windows. There is always a radio that can be turned to some all-night station, or a television set to turn artificial moonlight into the flickering images of the late show. We can put on a turntable whatever consolation we most respond to, Mozart or Copland or the Grateful Dead."

Five Quarters of the Orange: Angela Camos

In Five Quarters of the Orange by Joanne Harris, which takes place in occupied France, Framboise looks back on her constant battles with her mother:

"She wanted the clothes on the washing line hung by the hems: I hung them by the collars. The jars in the pantry had to have the labels facing the front: I turned them backward. I forgot to wash my hands before meals. I changed the order of the pans hanging on the kitchen wall, largest to smallest. I left the kitchen window open so that when she opened the door the draft would make it bang. I infringed a thousand of her personal rules, and she reacted to each trespass with the same bewildered rage. To her, those petty rules mattered because those were the things she used to control our world. Take them away and she was like the rest of us, orphaned and lost.

Of course, I didn't know that then."

The Power of One: Tim McDiffett

In The Power of One by Bryce Courtenay, Peekay, a boxer, says:

"I had even taught myself never to consider the consequences of losing a fight. ... [never to rob] the will of its single-minded concentration to win.
...
The power of one is above all things the power to believe in yourself, often well beyond any latent ability you may have previously demonstrated. The mind is the athlete; the body is simply the means it uses to run faster or longer, jump higher, shoot straighter, kick better, swim harder, hit further, or box better. ... "First with the head and then with the heart" was more than simply mixing brains with guts. It meant thinking well beyond the powers of normal concentration and then daring your courage to follow your thoughts."

The Spanish Bow: Andromeda Romano-Lax

This is Andromeda Romano-Lax, author of The Spanish Bow. Feliu, a cellist, finds out his mother has died:

"All along, I had felt unable to impress her, unable to fulfill whatever hopes she had for me, or to make her lack of hope more bearable. Now that she was dead, that potential was finally revoked. The person we are by the time our parents have died is the person we shall always be; any aspirations to further development are delusional. We have had our turn, and now we stand just one generational step way from our own deaths, every year passing more quickly than the last."