“The fear is so deep, so irrational, so immediate, that I can neither doubt it or examine it.”

“He sees a human body of a type that is supposed to fit the curves of his brain, but the body is so warped and broken that it can no longer cozy up to any of those curves.”

“I figure God's a creative guy. So when he comes down and lives with us in disguise, he can't help leaking creations here and there. Either that or he's an idiot. I haven't decided yet. Not a normal idiot- an idiot savant. God, idiot savant, what's the difference?”

“We depend on each other to lift ourselves up. Suffering is craving is fear is delusion clinging to selfhood, clinging to objects, clinging to the trivia that we think makes us happy. Clinging to superficialities. Clinging to the covering that separates us from each other. Strip off all that delusion, and we take a step forward toward each other and a step toward enlightenment.”

“The exact moment of dawn is always hard to spot, especially when the ground breathes out steam after a winter rain.”

“There were no absolutes in fiction, no certain way to deliver what was needed. So it was no surprise most technical writers considered novel-writing a gateway to madness.”

“Oh, and they said I have ADD, too." He lit a cigarette, his first of the day, and took a long, grateful drag. "But listen mate, I once sucked a geezer for twenty minutes to get him off. The clock was just over his shoulder and I timed it. Attention deficit?" He blew out a plume of smoke. "I don't think so.”