“Throughout my academic career, I'd given some pretty good talks. But being considered the best speaker in the computer science department is like being known as the tallest of the Seven Dwarfs.”

“For careers you say you went to be remembered for your artYour obsessions get you known throughout the school for being strangeMaking life-size models of the Velvet Underground in clay”

“I was convinced that being ripped in two by him would be the best pleasure I'd ever known.”

“There's a good part of Computer Science that's like magic. Unfortunately there's a bad part of Computer Science that's like religion.”

“And now she was found, no longer lost. Like a bag I'd given up for good suddenly reappearing in the middle of the night on my doorstep, packed for a journey I'd long ago forgotten. It was odd, considering I'd gotten accustomed to her being nowhere and anywhere, to finally know where my mother was. An exact location, pinpointed. Like she'd crossed over from my imagination, where I'd created a million different lives for her, back into this one.”

“Good-bye -- if you hear of my being stood up against a stone wall and shot to rags please know that I think that a pretty good way to depart this life. It beats old age, disease or falling down the cellar stairs.”