“Sometimes he wrote equations, or musical notation, sometimes he wrote in Latin; he refused to tell her what it was about. "Nothing," he said. "I have nothing important or original to say, yet I feel compelled to express myself, so I just write it down and let it go.”

“You know what Hans told me last week?" she says as I open the door of my fitting room. "He told me to write down a list of everything I wanted to say about that women-and then tear it up. He said I'd feel a sense of freedom.""Oh right," I say interestedly. "So what happened?" "I wrote it all down," says Laurel. "And then I mailed it to her!”

“Yet, he thought, if I can die saying, "Life is so beautiful," then nothing else is important. If i can believe in myself that much, nothing else matters.”

“I said it unto him who isn’t, and he wisely said nothing. Sometimes saying nothing is saying more than enough.”

“As for myself: I had come to the conclusion that there was nothing sacred about myself or any human being, that we were all machines, doomed to collide and collide and collide. For want of anything better to do, we became fans of collisions. Sometimes I wrote well about collisions, which meant I was a writing machine in good repair. Sometimes I wrote badly, which meant I was a writing machine in bad repair. I no more harbored sacredness than did a Pontiac, a mousetrap, or a South Bend Lathe.”

“I’m quoting my clone, because he quoted me thinking if I said it, he said it. He thought he was quoting himself when he quoted me. So in effect I’m quoting myself quoting myself, with my clone as a source of what I wrote.”