“Probably" is a word with an emergency ejector seat.”

“Probably in a parallel universe not far from here, I'm working for Nintendo.”

“All the seats were taken, and I had to squeeze into a three-inch slot. I lost my balance when the train pulled away, but a human crumple zone buffered my fall. We stayed like that, half fallen. The Diagonal People.”

“Reality is the page. Life is the word.”

“The truth of a myth...is not in its words but its patterns.”

“Women, oh, women! They'll find the baddest meanin' in your words an' hold it up, sayin', Look what you attacked me with!”

“Human life, Borges said, is a cascade of possible directions, and we take only one, or we perceive that we take only one—which is how novels are written, too. You start with a blank page, and the first word opens up possibilities for the second word. If your first word is Call, those second two or three could be a doctor or it could be me Ishmael. It could be Call girls on Saturday nights generally cost more than . . . The second sentence opens up a multitude of third sentences, and on we go through that denseness of choices taken and choices not taken, swinging our machetes.”