“Charley looked over at him. "About how much you and Jesse have in common."Jesse said, "Why don't you tell it, Bob; if you remember."Bob inched forward in his chair. "Well, if you'll pardon my saying so, it is interesting, the many ways you and I overlap and whatnot. You begin with my daddy, J.T. Ford. J stands for James! And T is Thomas, meaning 'twin.' Your daddy was a pastor of the New Hope Baptist Church; my daddy was part-time pastor of a church at Excelsior Springs. You're the youngest of the three James boys; I'm the youngest of the five Ford boys. You had twins as sons, I had twins as sisters. Frank is four and a half years older than you, which incidentally is the difference between Charley and me, the two outlaws in the Ford clan. Between us is another brother, Wilbur here (with six letters in his name); between Frank and you was a brother, Robert, also with six letters. Robert died in infancy, as most everyone knows, and he was named after your father, Robert, who was remembered by your brother's first-born, another Robert. Robert, of course, is my Christian name. My uncle, Robert Austin Ford, has a son named Jesse James Ford. You have blue eyes; I have blue eyes. You're five feet eight inches tall; I'm five feet eight inches tall. We're both hot-tempered and impulsive and devil-may-care. Smith and Wesson is our preferred make of revolver. There's the same number of letters and syllables in our names; I mean, Jesse James and Robert Ford. Oh me, I must've had a list as long as your nightshirt when I was twelve, but I lost some curiosities over the years.”

“Craig inscribed something in the journal and Bob walked over to study the entry. "Does the name Bob Ford mean anything to you?Craig dipped his quill in the ink bottle and scripted cursively on a brown blotter. "Is that your actual name or your alias?""Actual," said Bob, and he grinned with delight when he saw the name recorded in Craig's elegant calligraphy. "Pretty soon all of America will know who Bob Ford is.”

“Is everyone with one face called a Milo?""Oh no," Milo replied; "some are called Henry or George or Robert or John or lots of other things.""How terribly confusing," he cried. "Everything here is called exactly what it is. The triangles are called triangles, the circles are called circles, and even the same numbers have the same name. Why, can you imagine what would happen if we named all the twos Henry or George or Robert or John or lots of other things? You'd have to say Robert plus John equals four, and if the four's name were Albert, things would be hopeless.""I never thought of it that way," Milo admitted."Then I suggest you begin at once," admonished the Dodecahedron from his admonishing face, "for here in Digitopolis everything is quite precise.”

“Uncle Wiggens ain't really my uncle, everyone just calls him that. He's over eighty and fought in the War Between the States. He only has one leg and one hero, General Robert E. Lee. Uncle Wiggens manages to work Lee's name into pretty much any old conversation. You might say, 'My, it's cold today,' and he'd reply, 'You think this is cold? General Lee said it didn't even qualify as chill till your breath froze on your nose and made a little icicle.' He had about five different stories of how he lost his leg, every one of them entertaining. That night I was listening to the version that involved him running five Yankees into a bear's den.”

“Your work, coming from a fluid source, can be traced to the naked song of your youth. You spoke then of holding hands with God. Remember, through everything, you have always held that hand, grip it hard, Robert, and don't let go.(letter to Robert Mapplethorpe, 1970)”

“It comes from a very ancient democracy, you see...""You mean, it comes from a world of lizards?""No," said Ford, who by this time was a little more rational and coherent than he had been, having finally had the coffee forced down him, "nothing so simple. Nothing anything like so straightforward. On its world, the people are people. The leaders are lizards. The people hate the lizards and the lizards rule the people.""Odd," said Arthur, "I thought you said it was a democracy.""I did," said Ford. "It is.""So," said Arthur, hoping he wasn't sounding ridiculously obtuse, "why don't people get rid of the lizards?""It honestly doesn't occur to them," said Ford. "They've all got the vote, so they all pretty much assume that the government they've voted in more or less approximates to the government they want.""You mean they actually vote for the lizards?""Oh yes," said Ford with a shrug, "of course.""But," said Arthur, going for the big one again, "why?""Because if they didn't vote for a lizard," said Ford, "the wrong lizard might get in. Got any gin?""What?""I said," said Ford, with an increasing air of urgency creeping into his voice, "have you got any gin?""I'll look. Tell me about the lizards."Ford shrugged again."Some people say that the lizards are the best thing that ever happenned to them," he said. "They're completely wrong of course, completely and utterly wrong, but someone's got to say it.""But that's terrible," said Arthur."Listen, bud," said Ford, "if I had one Altairian dollar for every time I heard one bit of the Universe look at another bit of the Universe and say 'That's terrible' I wouldn't be sitting here like a lemon looking for a gin.”