Dreams? If only they had been! But I don't need dreams, Doctor, that's why I hardly have them—because I have this life instead. With me it all happens in broad daylight!

The road to hell is paved with works-in-progress.

I cannot and do not live in the world of discretion, not as a writer, anyway. I would prefer to, I assure you - it would make life easier. But discretion is, unfortunately, not for novelists.

He had learned the worst lesson that life can teach - that it makes no sense.

You can no more make someone tell the truth than you can force someone to love you.

Old age isn't a battle; old age is a massacre.

The horror of being caged has lost its thrill.

Everybody else is working to change, persuade, tempt and control them. The best readers come to fiction to be free of all that noise.

I have a slogan I use when I get anxious writing, which happens quite a bit: ‘the ordeal is part of the commitment.’ It’s one of my mantras. It makes a lot of things doable.

When the whole world doesn't believe in God, it'll be a great place.

Because that is when you love somebody - when you see them being game in the face of the worst. Not courageous. Not heroic. Just game.

The day she realized they were never meant to be, is the day she now calls her - Birthday.

If it weren’t for her setting me free, I may still be a caged bird today, holding my own daughter captive on a shit-laden perch.

WHEN YOU ARE GREATFUL, THE UNIVERSE AND THE WORLD WANT TO GIVE YOU MORE.c

At great expense, we have built a vast system of inter-connecting stupidities.

Congress in the immigration law gives the president the power to restrict or suspend the entry of people he may deem appropriate.

If you're in a good profession, it's hard to get bored, because you're never finished - there will always be work you haven't done.

For the introduction of a new kind of music must be shunned as imperiling the whole state; since styles of music are never disturbed without affecting the most important political institutions.

I am going to put the Bible out of business.

The media claimed to be non-partisan, centrist. It's not been that way for a lot of history.

You don't filter smokestacks or water. Instead, you put the filter in your head and design the problem out of existence.