But she was seventeen now and not actually dumb. She knew that you could love somebody more than anything and still not love the person all that much, if you were busy with other things.

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

The number of ways to live in one lifetime is limitless. So why limit yourself?

Emotions tend to get in the way of a good argument.

You humans live in shallow waters

If I cannot be useful to my country, I'll try to be useful to my leader and to all the people around me.

I'm curious by individuals that embrace half a story so they can justify how incomplete they feel about their own self worth.

It's not about the money for me.

Powerful people affect many others and if I can in some way contribute to their awareness, they will put out better energy to millions and millions of people.

... three main components of leadership: mastery of the subject-matter, ability convincingly to articulate the particular course of action required and a fervent belief in its correctness.

If you know how to get fun out of the so-called discomforts, then you should know you are on the right lines.

God’s power rests not on totalizing omnipotence, but on His ability to alchemize suffering, tragedy, and loss into wisdom, understanding, and joy.