Being locked up is one thing, but to have no concept of confinement, to be ignorant of its terms and never understand that struggle is useless - that's what hell must be like.

The Greeks had invented democracy, built the Acropolis and called it a day.

Real love amounts to withholding the truth, even when you're offered the perfect opportunity to hurt someone's feelings.

A zoo is a good place to make a spectacle of yourself, as the people around you have creepier, more photogenic things to look at.

There seemed to be some correlation between devotion to God and a misguided zeal for marshmallows.

All of us take pride and pleasure in the fact that we are unique, but I'm afraid that when all is said and done the police are right: it all comes down to fingerprints.

Remember that the most important thing is to try and love other people as much as they love you.

Everyone looks retarded once you set your mind to it.

I started writing when I was twenty, and my first book came out seventeen years later.

Like all of my friends, she's a lousy judge of character.

A good [short story] would take me out of myself and then stuff me back in, outsized, now, and uneasy with the fit.

Destiny is as it is. Nothing can change it. Accept it before it ruins you.

Did you miss me while you were looking for yourself out there..

Persistence is the soul of a champion.

I feel like a member of any group comprised of outsiders.

People start to heal the moment they feel heard.

The most important part of us is the part that no one ever sees.

Things, things, things. Always more things, and success is seen as the abundance of things.

If what you have done yesterday still looks big to you. You haven't done much today.

True creative cities produce the legacy of an idea that does what funding cannot do: to foster.

In the stutter-flashes of light, the clouds look like huge transparent brains filled with bad thoughts.