“But no one could say he hadn't gotten even. He could not count the field women whom he had sexually degraded and demoralized and in whom he had left his seed so their bastard children would be a da...”

“. . . I had found the edge. The place where you unstrap all your fastenings to the earth, to what you are what you have been, where you flame out on the edge of the spheres, and the sun and moon be...”

“And every good artist knows that the gift comes from somewhere else, and it's there for a reason, and that's to make the world a better place.”

“Humility is not a virtue in a writer, it is an absolute necessity.”

“I looked at Lucas with the pang that a parent feels when he knows his child will be hurt and that it's no one's fault and that to try to preempt the rites of passage is an act of contempt for the c...”

“Some people say you pick up the Dirty Boogie where you left it off. Others say you pick it up where you would have been had you never gotten off it.”

“I finally know the difference between pleasing and loving, obeying and respecting. It has taken me so many years to be okay with being different, and with being this alive, this intense. (xxvi)”

“Spring passes and one remembers one's innocence.Summer passes and one remembers one's exuberance.Autumn passes and one remembers one's reverence.Winter passes and one remembers one's perseverance.”

“Birthdays could be such a bummer when you were older than the country you lived in.”

“I have left orders to be awakened at any time during national emergency, even if I'm in a cabinet meeting.”

“What young people didnt know, she thought, lying down beside this man, his hand on her shoulder, her arm; oh, what young people did not know. They did not know that lumpy, aged, and wrinkled bodies...”

“Use all this life to make yourself a great writer, thoughtful and kind, slowly, surely over the years.”

“Time falls on us, like rain, it falls like rain until we drown in it, and sometimes, it's like the drains overflow, and time just - pools up, it seeps, it gathers in the corners.”