“If I don’t clean off the bug corpses that are petrified on my bumper for looks, then what do I do it for? Safety. I feel safer not knowing how many things I’ve killed with my car, possibly including many missing children.”

“I miss you. You don’t know how much I miss you. You don’t know how my heart sinks inside me when I think how far away you are. But then, maybe you know that feeling. I hope you do. No, I wouldn’t wish that on you. But then, yes I would . . .. Forgive me for missing you that much.”

“How many things do I have to invent in my head to survive this?”

“Another thing I've been trying to do on my walks is to know what I'm looking at, when I'm looking at it. I want to be smart. When I walk down the sidewalk I see about a hundred different kinds of bugs and all I do is point at them like a caveman and say 'Ugh, look, a bug,' but I know each one of them must have a different name and a different reason why and how it came to be on the planet, and I don't know any of that stuff.”

“Novels for me are how I find out what's going on in my own head. And so that's a really useful and indeed critical thing to do when you do as many of these other things as I do.”

“I’ve lost many things, and many people, but thankfully I haven’t lost my life, or any of my clones.”