Acid gave me a clinical, unblinking look at madness, and I discovered I wasn't brave enough to be insane.

I think when you become a parent you go from being a star in the movie of your own life to the supporting player in the movie of someone else's.

I didn't say no because between safety and adventure I choose adventure.

I knew that I had been partially right in the storeroom above the bar on Christmas Day. Whoever I had become had to die.

Every day I ran to that book like it was a bottle of whiskey and crawled inside because it was a world that I had at least some control over, and slowly, in time, it began to take shape.

Divorce lawyers stoke anger and fear in their clients, knowing that as long as the conflicts remain unresolved the revenue stream will keep flowing.

I found the prospect daunting, but somehow comforting, too, because the counselors insisted it could be done, and, after all, many of them were recovering alcoholics themselves.

After all this time I found that the novel is in fact punk rock.

I found out it is just as hard to make a movie that you are not proud of as it is to make one you love.

My mother was tickled and I think kind of proud when my father got hit on my an attractive middle-aged Asian lady who hadn't noticed he was with his family. He was certainly pleased about it.

I didn't flee a dictator or swim an ocean to be an American like some do. I just thought long and hard about it.

When people's faith in the collective intelligence increases, falls to the same extent their own individual sense of responsibility.

In a rational society we would want our presidents to be teachers. In our actual society we insist they be cheerleaders.

You think you know what you want and how it's all supposed to turn out. When all is said and done, you get what you need. You know in the end that what you need is what you really wanted all along.

The lesser evil is also evil.

She had willed her heart to stay small and contained, but it wouldn’t be. Oh, well.

I think the 16 years that I spent in Green Bay speaks for itself.

Beer must be made by food companies. It makes you wander the streets at 3 am looking for things to eat. "What's that, is it moving, get it!! It's a nun! Fry her!! Fry her!"

It seems to be almost inevitable that the man who accepts a subordinate economic position in the Family degenerates into a loafer and a tyrant.

Nobody would stay interested in me if I was normal

The birch trees loom ahead like a brotherhood of ghosts.