As I sat in the office of the cure, he began to speak and explain to me what it was. I was there, and I had no choice but to continue, it seemed there was nothing but that, nothing else – and yet, it was being explained to me, almost without my permission, as a matter of course, this thing I did not understand: the cure for suicide.

— Jesse Ball

If he acts, if he doesn't, it's meaningless. The whole thing goes forward. No one is important. No one at all.

— Jesse Ball

If you want to say, Lucia, there is no inside of the park benches, I won’t argue with you. But, then you have to say where the pigeons come from.

— Jesse Ball

I had a lot of trouble in school to begin with. I got left back in kindergarten, and I was in special education. My teachers didn't have very much faith in me.

— Jesse Ball

I hate when I break my own rules. What’s the point of me being rational if I flail around like a clown?

— Jesse Ball

I'm an elephant today. I will need to have lots of room and also a bowl of water on the floor.

— Jesse Ball

… In this way that he sought to control the very passage of his life, deftly and without forethought, yet precisely and with enormous care. Part of it was to allow what was enormous, what was profound, without limiting it.

— Jesse Ball

I probably like being isolated more than many people do, but I'm lucky to have the friendship of many fine people, and they keep me from becoming very isolated. The world of my mind is certainly a populated and warm place, too. It's difficult for me to become too isolated with such resources.

— Jesse Ball

No one explains this to you, he thought. That there are so many things without solution.

— Jesse Ball

Not that believing such things has anything to do with whether they are true. You see that, don't you?

— Jesse Ball