An odd thing about beauty, however, is that it's absence tends not to arouse our sympathy as much as other forms of privation do.

I guess my life hasn’t always been happy, or easy, or exactly what I want. At a certain point, I just have to try not to think too much about certain things, or else they’ll break my heart.

Fiction is a solution, the best solution, to the problem of existential solitude.

It's doubtful that anyone with an internet connection at his workplace is writing good fiction.

Integrity's a neutral value. Hyenas have integrity, too. They're pure hyena.

Nice people don't necessarily fall in love with nice people.

The personality susceptible to the dream of limitless freedom is a personality also prone, should the dream ever sour, to misanthropy and rage.

The Mekons were kind of like the background music of my life.

Depression presents itself as a realism regarding the rottenness of the world in general and the rottenness of your life in particular.

Reading enables me to maintain a sense of something substantive– my ethical integrity, my intellectual integrity.

Fiction is a particularly effective way for strangers to connect across time and distance

You must never surrender to any defeat.

work hard. play hard. be kind.

I'd been educated stupidly, I knew nothing about nothing, that's part of being shy.

The time I save setting up and cleaning up probably balances out by the time I spend on output.

I would have had fun doing just about anything.

Volunteers are caring friends

You - best secret boyfriend ever.

It is our responsibility to help wildlife adapt to a changing climate.

I would get up in the morning and I would say, "How am I going to bother them today?"

Until women are as ambitious as men, they're not gong to achieve as much as men.