Everything he did was at least partial and often total bullshit” (402).

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

A heart filled with light will always be in the middle of darkness. But, once it shines more brightly, there's nothing to be afraid. You, are the one who will conquer it.

A seed does not die because you buried it

Real strength isn’t control. It’s knowing when to let go.

Do not seek recognition or gratification from man — serve the Lord. He knows how to reward everyone

Three or four times, I have had the great death but my life is lived in the million tiny moments that make up the one dance

I know, speaking for myself, no matter what I'm able to do, no matter what book comes out and ends up on paper, I always had something bigger and grander in my head.

Peace can only come as a natural consequence of universal enlightenment.

I would get my student loans, get money, register and never really go. It was a system I thought would somehow pan out.

I have come to believe that the best kind of walk, or journey, is the one in which you have no particular destination when you set out.

Everybody wants to be a winner. Winning for you is everything, right? Wrong, winning is the only thing!