“Had I a ropemaker to my father, and someone had cast it in my teeth, I would forthwith have written in praise of ropemakers, and proved it by sound sillogistry to be one of the seven liberal sciences.”

“you shall tie the marriage knot with the ropemaker's daughter and the cawing of the crows will be your wedding song.”

“And were an epitaph to be my story I'd have a short one ready for my own. I would have written of me on my stone: I had a lover's quarrel with the world.”

“I have always known there is a difference between loneliness and aloneness. I am alone, but my father is lonely. And if I had to choose one, I would rather be alone.”

“Since there is no one else to praise me, I will praise myself -- will say that I have never tampered with a single tooth in my thought machine, such as it is. There are teeth missing, God knows -- some I was born without, teeth that will never grow. And other teeth have been stripped by the clutchless shifts of history -- But never have I willfully destroyed a tooth on a gear of my thinking machine. Never have I said to myself, 'This fact I can do without.”

“I had one rule: respect. For me, my family, and for my friends … It might sound hypocritical to the women that have passed through my apartment door, but if they carried themselves with respect, I would have given it to them.”