“Are there many people without illness or disability who sit at home in the evening with clenched fists, continually changing the channel of a television set and wishing they had the courage to roll over the parapet of a high bridge? I bet there are millions of us.”

“A human being is like a television set with millions of channels.... We cannot let just one channel dominate us. We have the seed of everything in us, and we have to recover our own sovereignty.”

“Chance people on the bridges peeping over the parapets into a nether sky of fog, with fog all round them, as if they were up in a balloon, and hanging in the misty clouds.”

“We were stereotyped the way many athletes with disabilities or illnesses are, particularly in participatory sports such as biking, running, and triathlon. After a while I could pretty much fill in the thought balloons over these people's heads. "Oh, look at these heroic young people, courageously struggling to get themselves across the finish line, in order to raise money for thier cause. How inspiring!" Don't get me wrong; while we appreciate the good wishes and realized that they were usually genuine, something in that attitude rankled me, and still does. We're athletes, dammit, and we want to be accorded the same respect as other competitors. That's how you treat somebody with illness or disability, in my opinion. Not as a special-needs person, but as a person.”

“As a result of these news stories, millions of people must have become aware of "niggardly," who otherwise would never have heard it, let alone thought to use it. If this is right, and the word has a new currency, it is probably not the currency I would wish for. The word's new lease of life is probably among manufacturers and retailers of sophomoric humor. I bet that even as I write, some adolescent boys, in the stairwell of some high school somewhere in America, are accusing each other of being niggardly, and sniggering at their own outrageous wit. I bet … Wait a minute. Sniggering? Oh, my God …”

“Fog everywhere. Fog up the river where it flows among green airs and meadows; fog down the river, where it rolls defiled among the tiers of shipping, and the waterside pollutions of a great (and dirty) city.... Chance people on the bridges peeping over the parapets into a nether sky of fog, with fog all round them, as if they were up in a balloon and hanging in the misty clouds.”