It was amazing how it worked: the tiniest bit of truth made credible the greatest lies.

The Pulitzer Prize is an idea; it's a vote of confidence. Like literature, it exists purely in the mind.

There have been hermaphrodites around forever, Cal. Forever. Plato said that the original human being was a hermaphrodite. Did you know that? The original person was two halves, one male, one female. Then these got separated. That's why everybody's always searching for their other half. Except for us. We've got both halves already.

If you talk to geneticists they are constantly finding that your genes are being switched on and off because of the environment. Genes alone do not determine an exact path in your life.

She was a large, disordered woman, like a child's drawing that didn't stay within the lines.

Usually my ideas are small.

Normality wasn't normal. It couldn't be. If normality were normal, everybody could leave it alone. They could sit back and let normality manifest itself.