“In truth I was very pleased with myself and with my story and all that had happened in it. Because you can't help being impressed with your own story. Because if you're not impressed with your own story, then who will be?”

“Can a story be good only if it produces an effect? If the effect is a bad one, but intended, has the story done its job? Is it then a good story? If the story produces an effect other than the intended one, is it then a bad story? Can a story be said to produce an effect at all? Can a story actually do anything at all? ”

“Because this is one of the things I learned on my own: you need to say things simply, especially when they're complicated.”

“... I also empathized, because she'd tried to do these things out of love, and because she had bumbled the attempt, and I suppose this - the ability to empathize with the people we hate - is exactly the quality that makes us human beings, which makes you wonder why anyone would want to be one.”

“This helping-people business was an attractive idea, I'll admit, because up to now I'd not done much more than be, and when I wasn't just being, I'd caused some pain, too.”

“That was his phrase - "the high ramparts of my defensiveness"- and I remembered it in case I ever decide to build and then describe my own ramparts.”

“They [my eyes] immediately started to tear up, tears being your eyes' way of forbidding you to look away,of forcing you to look at the world you've made or unmade. ”