“If anyone in your publishing life were to argue against a particular book or a career aspiration for reasons you had not already pondered and rejected after careful analysis, if they dazzled you with brilliant new considerations, then you’d have to back off and revisit your decisions. But what I was told never dazzled me. For example, I was often advised, by different people, that my work would never gain a big audience because my vocabulary was too large.”

“To spare Cloyce's victims further indignities to their memory, I must be a scourge. To prevent others from perhaps being infected by Cloyce's depravity by watching him at work, I must be a scourge. To prevent time management technology from falling into the hands of authorities who, if not already corrupt, would be corrupted by it, I must be a scourge.Scourges aren't heroes.I had never imagined myself to be a hero, but never had I imagined I would be this.Scourges transgress against social and sacred order.A scourge went into darker territory than that. A scourge was not compelled to kill by mental imbalance or emotional confusion or selfish desire. A scourge made a carefully reasoned decision to kill in numbers that exceeded what was absolutely necessary to ensure self-preservation and the defense of the innocent. Even if he killed for the right reason, he was in rebellion against social order and commanding authority.Who scourges will be scourged. In fulfilling this dark role in Roseland, I would bring about my own death.Yet I knew I would not retreat from my decision.”

“I stopped keeping an eye out for Santa Claus on Christmas Eve because, when I was five, my mother told me that Santa was a wicked pervert who would cut off my peepee with a pair of scissors...if I didn't stop chattering about him, he would be certain to put me on his list and look me up.Christmas was never the same after that, but at least I still have my peepee.”

“The depth of your wardrobe dazzles the mind. Ralph Lauren weeps.”

“No, if there's any ultimate redemption, it would be because I passed though your life without scarring you, and did not diminish who you are.”

“Please, don't torture me with cliches. If you're going to try to intimidate me, have the courtesy to go away for a while, acquire a better education, improve your vocabulary, and come back with some fresh metaphors.”

“Without faith to act as a governor, the human mind is a runaway worry generator, a dynamo of negative expectations. And because your life is yours to shape as you wish with free will, if you entertain too much anxiety about too many things, if you place no trust in providence, what you fear will more often come to pass. We make so many of our own troubles, from mere mishaps to disasters, by dwelling on the possibility of them until the possible becomes inevitable.”