“Call me Richard. That’s my real name. Call me that.”

“You didn't want to call your boyfriend Buddy, but when reverting to his real name meant Bruce, it left you with no real ground to stand on.”

“Show me a man or a woman alone and I'll show you a saint. Give me two and they'll fall in love. Give me three and they'll invent the charming thing we call 'society'. Give me four and they'll build a pyramid. Give me five and they'll make one an outcast. Give me six and they'll reinvent prejudice. Give me seven and in seven years they'll reinvent warfare. Man may have been made in the image of God, but human society was made in the image of His opposite number, and is always trying to get back home.”

“Start with a blank surface. It doesn't have to be paper or canvas, but I feel it should be white. We call it white because we need a word, but its true name is nothing. Black is the absence of light, but white is the absence of memory, the color of can't remember.”

“...the scholar's greatest weakness: calling hesitation research.”

“The scholar's greatest weakness: calling procrastination research.”

“Writing controlled fiction is called "plotting." Buckling your seatbelt and letting the story take over, however...that is called "storytelling." Storytelling is as natural as breathing; plotting is the literary version of artificial respiration.”