Every object, the old man had said, is but an interpretation of every — Lucius Shepard

"I submit that all psychotherapy is manipulation; that as psychiatrists we do not heal people, but manipulate their neuroses into functional modes."

"She’s sad because she’s drinking to be sad because she’s afraid that what she does not feel is actually a feeling. Typical post-modern Manhattan bullshit."

"The Southern education stuffs you full of incontrovertible proof that the Rebel defeat was a wild and improbable stroke of misfortune, that the unbeatable military genius of the Confederacy was foiled by an alliance of fate and Yankee treachery. If Stonewall hadn’t misplaced his boots, if Jeb hadn’t gone dancing the night before, if the creek didn’t rise. If, if, if. Acceptance of this viewpoint often leads to embarrassment in later life."

"In mine, while there was also agony, it was essentially a love affair with revolution, with the idea of revolution. And as with all great passions, what was most alluring was not the object of passion but the new depth of my own feelings. Thus I was blind to the realities underlying it."

"Manipulate? Yes, I manipulated. And despite the ensuing events, I would do so again, for it is the function of psychiatry to encourage the living to live."

"Doubt concerning their mental well-being creeps in. Is this an instance of healing or a freak scene? Are they two very different people who have connected on a level new to both of them, or are they emotional burnouts who aren’t even talking about the same subject and have misapprehended mild sexual attraction for a moment of truth? Just how much difference is there between those conditions?"