Discomfort is very much part of my master plan.

I try not to become too regular an addict of any one subculture.

I never take any notes or draw charts or make elaborate diagrams, but I hold an image of the shape of a book in my head and work from that mental hologram.

I've never related to the work geek at all-it sounds much more horrible than nerd. Like a freak biting a chicken's head off in a sideshow.

I learned to write fiction the way I learned to read fiction - by skipping the parts that bored me.

Someday I would change my name to Shut Up and save everybody a lot of time.

I work on a laptop specifically so I can work in cafes and pretend I'm part of the human world.

What age is a black boy when he learns he's scary?

It was only as I wrote about fear that I began to find paths of access to feelings that were intolerable to me then.

I want what we all want," said Carl. "To move certain parts of the interior of myself into the exterior world, to see if they can be embraced.

I can't bear the silent ringing in my skull.

Thought is the supreme power. The right question will have the right answer.

There is an unreasonable joy to be had from the observation of small birds going about their bright, oblivious business

You cannot marry your past without divorcing your future.

They don't want to see rap music. They don't want to see the Beastie Boys. They don't care what we're doing. They want one thing and one thing only: that's to see Madonna come on stage.

In constitutional states, liberty is compensation for heavy taxes; in dictatorships, the subsititue is light taxes.

The most mortifying infirmity in human nature, to feel in ourselves, or to contemplate in another, is perhaps cowardice.

Failure: Is it a limitation? Bad timing? It's a lot of things. It's something you can't be afraid of, because you'll stop growing. The next step beyond failure could be your biggest success in life.

I believe in poetry as a way of surviving the emotional chaos, spiritual confusions and traumatic events that come with being alive.

Give a man a reputation as an early riser and he can sleep 'til noon.

It always matters, whether or not you can trust your government.