“Write something about me then,' he said when I came back. He grinned. 'Go on! Now! I bet you can!' 'I don't do portraits, Choe.' The lies liberated from this statement skittered off into infinity like images between two mirrors.”

“Behind him Kaldar nudged Urow's youngest son. "Bet you he lasts at least thirty seconds.""Um..." Gaston looked at him. "No he won't.""Bet me something.""I don't have anything."Kaldar grimaced. "Pick up that rock."Gaston swiped the rock off the ground. "Now you have a rock. I bet this five bucks against your rock."Gaston grinned. "Deal.”

“Do it. Before they send those mutts back or something. I don't want to die like Cato," he says.“Then you shoot me," I say furiously, shoving the weapons back at him. "You shoot me and go home and live with it!" And as I say it, I know death right here, right now would be the easier of the two.”

“A man is a fool not to put everything he has, at any given moment, into what he is creating. You're there now doing the thing on paper. You're not killing the goose, you're just producing an egg. So I don't worry about inspiration, or anything like that. It's a matter of just sitting down and working. I have never had the problem of a writing block. I've heard about it. I've felt reluctant to write on some days, for whole weeks, or sometimes even longer. I'd much rather go fishing, for example, or go sharpen pencils, or go swimming, or what not. But, later, coming back and reading what I have produced, I am unable to detect the difference between what came easily and when I had to sit down and say, "Well, now it's writing time and now I'll write." There's no difference on paper between the two.”

“There was something else that [Christopher] Reeve told me privately, off camera, and it made me grin. While he was lying in the hospital, just becoming conscious with tubes connected to all parts of his body, a doctor in a white coat came in and with a Russian accent, commanded: "Turn over!"Are you nuts? Reeve thought.I said: 'Turn over!'" the doctor repeated.As Reeve was about to answer "the imbecile", he realized there was something familiar about the man in the white coat. He wasn't a doctor at all. He was Reeve's old buddy from acting school at Julliard, Robin Williams. Reeve waited for a breath, and almost choked with laughter. He realized, he told me, "If I can laugh, I can live.”

“I bet it breaks your heart to have two of your friends pine for me the way they do," he said proudly. "Luna...and now Scarlet. They can't keep their hands off of me.""It's just because you are foreign to them. It's like if they went to the zoo and stared at the monkeys. You are the monkey.”