“Isn’t there anything you can do about the predator?”

Variant: Because the world isn’t divided into the special and the ordinary. Everyone has the potential to be extraordinary. As long as you have a soul and free will, you can be anything, do anything, choose anything.
Source: City of Heavenly Fire

Oui interview (1979)
Context: There isn’t anything weird about my music. Weird is a skeleton in the closet, wearing a rubber mask with warts all over its nose, and all that kind of shit. That’s not what I do. The thing that makes my music unusual is that people only hear one kind of music all the time over the radio. It’s wallpaper to their lives. Audile wallpaper. There’s one acceptable beat and there are three acceptable chord progressions. There are five acceptable words: baby, love, tears, yat yat. Just because I don’t deal in those terms doesn’t mean I’m weird. So tell these people: I ain’t weird; I’m rational. I’m a person who can choose to write stuff like that, or choose to write stuff that includes all the notes on the piano played at once, followed by a cement truck driving over the piano, followed by a small atomic explosion. Nothing weird about that as long as you do it in a meaningful way.

“The Finder” (p. 67)
Earthsea Books, Tales from Earthsea (2001)

In response to David Winer http://scripting.wordpress.com/2006/12/21/scripting-news-for-12212006/

NPR Interview http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4612364 with Pirsig (1974)

Source: We Need to Talk About Kevin

“I reckon not, Mr. Washburn,” Curly says.

The Never-Ending Western Movie (p. 119)
Short fiction, The Robot Who Looked Like Me (1978)