“I was too much of a Bronx kid to read Emerson or Hawthorne.”

“Too much has been forgotten in the name of memory. ”

“He thinks he's happy but it's just a nerve cell in his brain that's getting too much stimulation or too little stimulation.”

“Before I fell asleep, eventually, was thinking when I was a small kid how I'd try to imagine the end of the century and what a far-off wonder that was and I'd figure out how old I'd be when the century ended, years, months, days and now look, incredible we're here - we're six years in and I realize I'm the same skinny kid, my life shadowed by his presence, won't step on cracks on the sidewalk, not as superstition but as a test, a discipline, still do it.”

“I think of kids. It makes me feel selfish, to be so wary of having a family. Never mind do I have a job or not. I'll have a job soon, a good one. That's not it. I'm in awe of raising, basically, someone so tiny and soft.”

“Fear is unnatural. Lightning and thunder are unnatural. Pain, death, reality, these are all unnatural. We can't bear these things as they are. We know too much. So we resort to repression, compromise and disguise. This is how we survive the universe. This is the natural language of the species.”

“Jessie was trying to read science fiction but nothing she read so far could begin to match ordinary life on this planet, she said, for sheer unimaginableness.”