“When my father would yell at me, I told myself someday I'd use it in a book.”

“I wanted to take up music, so my father bought me a blunt instrument. He told me to knock myself out.”

“I remember once saying that I'd like to go to university. My father told me: 'I would rather see you dead at my feet than have you go to a university.' I'm laughing about it now, but at the time I was terribly upset. I didn't even understand what going to university meant.”

“I don’t fear death. I remember my last meeting with my father when he told me, "You know, tonight when I will be killed, my mother and my father will be waiting for me." It makes me weepy … but I don’t think it can happen unless God wants it to happen because so many people have tried to kill me.”

“I thought of the brutal truths so often borne on predawn light. I'd had a few in my time, and they'd all led to this. I was a stranger to myself. I'd gone to law school for my father, married for my father; and for that same man, and for the vile woman who shared my bed, I'd surrendered my dreams of family — my very soul. Now he was dead and all I had was this truth: My life was not my own. It belonged to an empty shell that wore my face, Yet I refused to pity myself.”

“I didn't have much to say to anybody but kept to myself and my books. With my eyes closed, I would touch a familiar book and draw it's fragrance deep inside me. This was enough to make me happy.”

“My father told me once that the most important thing every man should know is what he would die for.”

“As it was, I couldn't escape the feeling that I was out of my element. I found myself thinking of a book I'd left half-read at home and wishing I'd stuck it in my purse so I could pull it out now.”

“I’ve always been mysterious. My mother and father always used to ask me, "What are you thinking, what’s going on?" There are times when I don’t understand myself, you know what I mean?”

“I got home at last and crawled into bed next to my girlfriend. I told her I'd had an epiphany that night [about using stencils] and she told me to stop taking that drug 'cos it's bad for your heart.”