“The stories of young men searching for their fathers are the stories of young men who through their adventures father themselves by doing for themselves what they hoped a father would do for them. ("Anthropology: What Is Lost In Rotation")”

“I don't think that anyone outside Paris can understand love and murder as we do.But Emile loves Paris, and loving Paris is a murderous education. ("Anthropology: What Is Lost In Rotation")”

“The infinitesimal seedlings became a forest of trees that grew courteously, correcting the distances between themselves as they shaped themselves to the promptings of available light and moisture, tempering the climate and the temperaments of the Scots, as the driest land became moist and the wettest land became dry, seedlings finding a mean between extremes, and the trees constructing a moderate zone for themselves even into what I would have called tundra, until I understood the fact that Aristotle taught, while walking in a botanic garden, that the middle is fittest to discern the extremes. ("Interim")”

“...each part of a story, each word if possible, was to work frontally as well as laterally... ("Conveyance: The Story I would Not Want Bill Wilson To Read")”

“You might say as you tirelessly said of my stories, at least of the adjectives, that I should render the evidence, not render the verdict... ("Conveyance: The Story I would Not Want Bill Wilson To Read")”

“Comparisons deplete the actuality of the things compared... ("Conveyance: The Story I would Not Want Bill Wilson To Read")”

“Boys do not long for fathers who will usher them through the gauntlet of psychological disconnect. They long for fathers who have themselves survived intact. Boys do not ache for their father's masculinity. They ache for their fathers' hearts.”