“From any rational point of view I am absurd; but there are no longer any rational points of view.”

“My own view of myself was that I was small and innocuous, a marshmallow compared to the others. I was a poor shot with a 22, for instance, and not very good with an ax. It took me a long time to figure out that the youngest in a family of dragons is still a dragon from the point of view of those who find dragons alarming.”

“Toast was a pointless invention from the Dark Ages. Toast was an implement of torture that caused all those subjected to it to regurgitate in verbal form the sins and crimes of their past lives. Toast was a ritual item devoured by fetishists in the belief that it would enhance their kinetic and sexual powers. Toast cannot be explained by any rational means.Toast is me.I am toast.”

“Gardening is not a rational act.”

“History is a construct...Any point of entry is possible and all choices are arbitrary. Still there are definitive moments...We can look at these events and say that after them things were never the same again.”

“I want everything back, the way it was. But there is no point to it, this wanting.”

“Nor did I make any distinctions between great literature and any other kind. I just liked reading.”