But I loved George in part because he believed me; because if I stood in a cold, plain room and yelled FIRE, he would walk over and ask me why.

I want to be violated by insight.

We're all getting too smart. Our brains are just getting bigger and bigger, and the world dries up and dies when there's too much thought and not enough heart.

It is so often surprising, who rescues you at your lowest moments.

Many kids, it seemed, would find out that their parents were flawed, messed-up people later in life, and I didn't appreciate getting to know it all so strong and early.

As a writer you ask yourself to dream while awake.

Light is good company, when alone; I took my comfort where I found it, and the warmest yellow bulb in the living-room lamp had become a kind of radiant babysitter all its own.

…kissing George was a little like rolling in caramel after spending years surviving off rice sticks.

...a Dorito asks nothing of you, which is its great gift. It only asks that you are not there.

Mom flipped through the magazines like the pages needed to be slapped.

I admired that stride; it was like he folded space in two with it.

Discipline your mind to think positively

Confidence, darling." He leans across the table and touches a finger to my cheek. "You could learn something from me, you know.

If I could, I would kiss him every second of every day. For all the days.

A library is a different kind of social reality (of the three dimensional kind), which by its very existence teaches a system of values beyond the fiscal.

It's a bubble. It has to have intrinsic value. You have to really stretch your imagination to infer what the intrinsic value of Bitcoin is. I haven't been able to do it. Maybe somebody else can.

I break bones, I break people, I break spirits!

The cards are stacked (quite properly, I imagine) against all professional aesthetes, and no doubt we all deserve the dark, wordy, academic deaths we all sooner or later die.

People are more interested in someone who goes on stage and tells the truth.

The recycling of resource by the aggregate behavior of a diverse array of agents is much more than the sum of the individual actions.

Before you judge someone else, stop and think about all that God has forgiven you for.