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

“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.”

“After ten pages I felt that Nietzsche was reading me, not I him.”

“All these people like my mother paying counselors and clinics to reattach them to reality; all of us people here paying Sony and Sega to reattach us to unreality.”

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

“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!”