“My father always says one thing leads to another. It certainly does. I started out to buy a friend a birthday present, and I end up trying to get a factory to go with it....”

“Carlos was known to the pushcart peddlers as the most skillful carton-flattener in the Lower East Side section of New York City. Carlos' business was to go around to small stores that had clean cardboard cartons which they wished to be rid of. With two or three deft motions, Carlos would flatten the cartons and carefully stack them on his pushcart. Carlos was the only flattener in the business who could stack to a height of twelve feet without the cartons slipping off.”

“Nor do I try to keep a garden, onlyAn avocado in a glass of water --Roots pallid, gemmed with air. And later,When the small gilt leaves have grownFleshy and green, I let them die, yes, yes,And start another. I am earth's no less.”

“Once you get into it, it's all you can think about. Look, I know you don't trust my judgment because I eat cat shit. Someday I'll explain that to you. But right now do what I say. Just pick up the ball and throw it.”

“Why do you always come in to kiss me while I'm on the toilet?" I asked."Makes us feel close to you," Chuck said, surprised I would ask. "Peeing is one of the special things we share.”

“Maybe this is kind of cliche, but animals, well, dogs, are what I do for a living. One reason I like spending time with them so much is they seem to think people are really good. They live with us, and obey our rules, most of which make no sense to them. And the main reason they do it is because they like us. When I watch them, sometimes I'm so blow away by how enthusiastic they are about everything we do that I have to go out and buy them something squeaky or chewy. Just because I love proving to them that it's not a mistake to see the world as a great benevolent place. I hope one day to react to something with as much pure ecstasy as I see in Chuck's face every time I throw the ball. Sometimes he looks so happy, it reminds me of the way blind people smile way too big because they can't see themselves. And if none of this links to anything in you, well... I think you don't know who I am.”

“By the time the last of these relationships ended I was such a quaking mass of colliding, exploding neurotransmitter malfunctions that the only coherent sentence I could form in my native tongue went: "Never again.”