“When I was born it was Simon who they'd put once more into his arms, the dream of a child he could mold in his own image. It certainly wasn't me, a half-baked attempt at life, a rough sketch showing no familiar traits whatsoever.”

“Her temperament has never been competitive; she immediately wants to disappear, to obliterate herself, to make way for them.”

“The vigor I lacked for physical activities became incandescent when, pen in hand, I filled those pages with invented stories. Sometimes they were intimately about me – family tales, parental exploits – sometimes they became horrific stories sprinkled with torture, death, and reunion: crazy games and tear-soaked sagas.”

“When his first-born was put into his arms, he could see that the boy had inherited his own eyes, as they once were - large, brilliant, and black.”

“Jason woke to a feeling of fear, borne from a dream that he couldn’t remember when waking. But as his mind focused, he found the dream right before him. The half-woman lay perfectly molded against his body, her wings draped down her back.”

“He was my father. I own half his genes, and all of his history. Believe this: the mistakes are part of the story. I am born of a man who believed he could tell nothing but the truth, while he set down for all time the Poisonwood Bible.”

“The more he identifies with the dominant images of need, the less he understands his own life and his own desires. The spectacle’s estrangement from the acting subject is expressed by the fact that the individual’s gestures are no longer his own; they are the gestures of someone else who represents them to him.”