“Trapped inside a metaphor, I've often felt the need to re-describe it, to change the terms. This isn't so much a balloon, I've wanted to say, as a bubble within which I'm simultaneously exposed and sealed off.... depriving me of reality, reducing me to an abstraction....[NY, Dec. 1991; Columbia Graduate School Of Journalism Speech]”

“I've told my children that when I die, to release balloons in the sky to celebrate that I graduated. For me, death is a graduation.”

“I've never felt about anybody the way I feel about you," I confessed in a rush. "I can't imagine that what I'm feeling isn't love. But 'I love you' doesn't feel adequate to express it." I plunged headlong into babbling. "I desperately want you to love me. I need you to love me - but I don't want to need it, and I'm afraid that I need it too much.”

“I've just always wanted to see a balloon drift off into a cloudless sky.”

“That's me, giving myself a tough-love speech. I'm going to start doing that more often, I've decided. One might as well put his inner monologue to good use.”

“I've always done whatever I felt like doing in life. People may try to stop me, and convince me I'm wrong, but I won't change.”