A book is the only real escape from this fallen world. Aside from death.

While I fear that we're drawn to what abandons us, and to what seems most likely to abandon us, in the end I believe we're defined by what embraces us.

Any book is better than no book. Slowly, surely, one will lead you to another, which will lead you to the best.

Your best is whatever you can do comfortably without having a breakdown.

To be a man, a boy must see a man

Some of football's gaudiest displays of manliness are purely aesthetic. It's not what players do, it's how they look doing it.

The greatest players use anger as fuel. Michael Jordan played every night with something like road rage.

Beer is amazing. Nutritional. Medicinal. A beverage, but also a meal.

Long before it legally served me, the bar saved me. It restored my faith when I was a boy, tended me as a teenager, and when I was a young man the bar embraced me.

Of course many bars in Manhasset, like bars everywhere, were nasty places, full of pickled people marinating in regret.

History is the narrative of people searching for a place to go.

The Lord gives strength for every good deeds.

What comes out of you when you are squeezed is what is inside of you.

He has served countless kings, faked countless deaths, bided his time, waiting for you.

No matter who you are or what you do, there will always be some people who don't like you

I sometimes wonder if what I create as a writer will leave any sort of dent. There's really no way of knowing, so I just have to keep going.

The characters I write about are very internal.

By compassion we make others' misery our own, and so, by relieving them, we relieve ourselves also.

When I do stand-up... I get to do whatever I want to do. There's no boundaries. You'll get to know me. You'll leave with a piece of me.

HBO and I have a deal to at least try to make a television series from the Leonid McGill stories. We're going to start with the first novel, 'The Long Fall'.