“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.”

“A lady's imagination is very rapid; it jumps from admiration to love, from love to matrimony in a moment.”

“I've always said that idleness dulls the spirit. We have to keep the brain busy, or at least the hands if we don't have a brain.”

“If your workplace was somehow transplanted into the jungle and everyone was forced to survive at a very primitive level, it's safe to say that eventually your boss would rape you.”