Here are five mystery quotelets.  As usual, I'm entering them from 
memory, but I'm pretty sure I've got them right except for #3, 
which I've never seen in print:  I know it only from the author's 
reading of it on an old Caedmon recording.  The words about right, 
but I suspect the format is not.  Good luck!  

1. [In answer to the question "Do you believe in God?"]  I've never 
   told anyone this before, so I hope it gives you a salutary 
   little chill:  I know more than I could ever express in words, 
   and I could not have expressed the little I have expressed if I 
   had not known so much more.  

2. I owe all my financial success to a bit of advice my father gave me 
   on my twenty-first birthday.  He said, "Son, here's a million 
   dollars.  Don't lose it." 

3. Obediently and now we form a dumb me sandwich, and now which moves.  
   Three Comrades move: Comrade Before-Me, Comrade I, Comrade Behind-
   Me.  Un and move and un.  And always behind Comrade Behind-Me:  
   Num-ber-less-ness.  

4. Sexual intercourse began
   In 1963
   (Which was rather late for me)
   Between the end of the Chatterly ban
   And the Beatles' first LP.

5. Back in the days when I performed my part as a keel boatman, I 
   made the acquaintance of a trifling little steamboat which used 
   to puff and wheeze about in the Sangamon River.  It had a five-
   foot boiler and a seven-foot whistle, and every time it whistled 
   the boat stopped.  

21 responses total.

4. Ogden Nash?
5. Samuel Clemens?

Twain on the Sangamon?  And it strikes me as a bit late for Nash, but other-
wise reasonable.  But I'll ***guess*** X. J. Kennedy for 4.  Other than that
I have no ideas right off.  Er ... 3. cummings?

Where *is* the Sangamon River?

Its a mediocre river in Illinois, tributary to the Illinois River. It
flows past Lincoln, IL.

#3 is e.e. cummings.  It's from the "Lenin's Tomb" episode
in his book EIMI. 

#4 is neither Ogden Nash nor X.J. Kennedy.

#5 is not Clemens.  

One down, four to go!

Ah yes.  I was thinking less literally or that would have been easy.
That one was really an afterthought.
I don't suppose #5 is Edgar Lee Masters.  I really don't know anything
biographical ...

Hints:  

They're all dead white males.  Two of them were murdered, the 
others died of natural causes.  

Quote #1 is from an interview in Playboy magazine.  The interviewer 
who asked the question "Do you believe in God?" was Alvin Toffler, 
before he became famous as the author of _Future Shock_.  

The author of quote #4 was an Englishman who was offered the 
position of Poet Laureate and turned it down.  When asked why he'd 
refused this coveted honor, he answered: "I wake up screaming." 

I don't suppose #5 could be Abraham Lincoln?  He did have some connection
with Sangamo County and the Sangamon River, and he's a murdered white
male.

(Tongue firmly in cheek, as it misses on *almost* everything:)
1. Jimmy Carter

I mentioned these to Grace, & she also came up with Lincoln as a possibility
for #5.
To take flying leaps at a couple:
1. Alfred Hitchcock.  (*Purely* on diction.)
2. JFK. (Purely as murdered WM wealthy by inheritance.)

I tracked down the selection from EIMI; it's in _i: six nonlectures_, page
101 of the book form ... I too heard the record, in around 1967 or 1968
in my HS library.  The eccentric typography would have been a giveaway to
a lot more of us, Michael:
...Obediently and now we form a dumb me-sandwich. & now which,moves
  3 comrades move;comrade before me(comrade I)comrade behind me...un-...and
move...and un-...and always(behind comrade behind me)numb-erl-ess-ness

Nice, Michael - I tried EIMI (BTW this is Greek for "am") and found it
entirely impenetrable & gave up.  But nonetheless his impressions of the
USSR (at a time when many intellectuals visited & came back extolling
paradise on earth) are compelling and appear to hindsight to be very
perceptive.  There's also a poem:

kumrads die because they're told)
kumrads die before they're old
(kumrads aren't afraid to die
kumrads don't
and kumrads won't
believe in life)and death knows whie

(all good kumrads you can tell
by their altruistic smell
moscow pipes good kumrads dance)
kumrads enjoy
s.freud knows whoy
the hope that you may mess your pance

every kumrad is a bit
of quite unmitigated hate
(travelling in a futile groove
god knows why)
and so do i
(because they are afraid to love

***********************************
(from _no thanks_, 1935)

Sorry for the long drift, folks

 
re 3. Springfield IL

Well, it's a few other places around there too.  (Grace is from Decatur,
halfway between Springfield and Champaign.  "Central Illinois" is more
like it.  (But I don't really know where it comes from before that.)

Good guesses, all.  The "bingos" so far:  #2 is John F. Kennedy, #3 
is e.e. cummings, and #5 is Abraham Lincoln.  
 
That leaves #1 and #4.  

Quote #1 does sound like Hitchcock, doesn't it?  The author was 
sometimes compared to Hitchcock (whom he greatly admired) because, 
among other similarities, he liked to make secret personal 
appearances in his novels.  He was very much in vogue from about 
1960 on.  He even made the cover of Time magazine in 1968 or 1969.  
His reputation declined somewhat after his death.  In the same 
interview the quote is from, he seemed to foresee this decline:  
"With the devil's connivance, I turn to the books page from 2015 
and find, 'Nobody reads _______ or Fulmerford anymore.'  Awful 
question:  Who is this unfortunate Fulmerford?"  

#4 was a well-known quote, I thought, so if no one's guessing the 
author it must mean he's not as well-known as I thought.  He wrote 
another poem that began: "They fuck you up, your mum and dad." 

Forseeing a decline?  That quote in 13 sounds like Heinlein.  But the
first quote (#1) in 0 doesn't.  Hmm..

well, my little seasonal gift is to keep this item going by admitting that
i know the answer to #4 is philip larkin.

that just leaves #1 for some enterprising mind...

Wonder what Lincoln's point was on #5.  It's the kind of anecdote he liked,
but he usually didn't waste them.

Philip Larkin is right, keats, you slyboots.

I think Lincoln was cautioning his staff about inappropriate boasting.

Everyone give up on #1?

no, give me a bit of time to think about it...you've given us some very useful
 clues...

Well?????

Vladimir Nabokov

oops. i hadn't been back to writing in a while.
 
i can't exactly say i'm stunned that md used a 
nabokov quote, though...

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