Fiction, I believed, was the transmutation of experiential dross into linguistic gold. Fiction meant taking up whatever the world had abandoned by the road and making something beautiful out of it.

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

Truth is not a path you follow, but one created by your footsteps.

Sometimes the greatest storms bring out the greatest beauty… Life can be a storm, but your hope is a rainbow and your friends and family are the gold.

Nurture youroriginality, don’t ever bury itaway.

When you fall in love with a writer you will never die.

...what exactly is there in human existence that can lure you away from pleasure: peace of mind, a walk by the sea, moderation?

I am an old man and have known a great many troubles but most of them never happened.

When I travel, I love speaking to women around the world about the things that inspire them, the fashions they like, what makes something good and what would make it even better.

There is no greatness apart from self control. Development that does not include self government will only guarantee our mediocrity.

That's always been my test for what makes a story: is this something journalists would gossip with each other about?

Sometimes, you get things right the first time. Others, the second. But the third time, they say, is the charm.