[Ernest ]Hemingway always said, "Write about what you know." I think you can do that, and if you want to write about what you don't know, you can. It just takes a lot more work.

Maybe life is a process of trading hopes for memories.

Can you understand your own dreams, which arise with mushrooms' rank richness in the night-forests within your skull?

Death is ordinary. Behold it, subtract its patterns and lessons from those of the death that weapons bring, and maybe the residue will show what violence is.

Just for the hell of it, try to love someone as unlike you as possible.

When I go train hopping and I look up into the sky, there are always so many more stars than I remember there were.

Death cannot be experienced either by the dead or the living.

The instant people specialize, its in their interest to dehumanize the people their specialized function operates upon.

At least I hope - that the fiction I've written so far has flaws but has mostly been successful.

I feel like I'm almost ready to write fiction about the border. But even after 10 years of writing nonfiction about it, I don't think I know quite enough to do it right.

There will come a time when nobody reads my books and no one remembers who I was. And in the meantime, I'll do it my way.

Writing is making sense of life. You work your whole life and perhaps you've made sense of one small area.

Immeasurable change is nobody's merit.

It was that kind of kiss. But as with all kisses, it was not without a certain element of danger

The beauty of daylight-saving time is that it just makes everyone feel sunnier.

Genuine sorrows are very tranquil in appearance in the deep bed they have dug for themselves. But, seeming to slumber, they corrode the soul like that frightful acid which penetrates crystal.

I didn't realize Toronto was so beautiful. Everywhere you go you see beautiful architecture.

To free desire from the tendency to cling, we have to be willing to stumble over ourselves.

Habit is either the best of servants or the worst of masters.

I’d heard you were dead.” "I heard you wear a red lace corset,” I said matter-of-factly. “But I don’t believe every bit of nonsense that gets rumored about.

The actors come and you start seeing things happen for real.