Forcing yourself to see the world through love's gaze can be healthy. Love is an attitude to life. It can save us.

There is this idea that you either read to escape or you read to find yourself. I don't really see the difference. We find ourselves through the process of escaping.

Minds have their own weather systems. You are in a hurricane. Hurricanes run out of energy eventually. Hold on.

That kind of monotony that running generates - the one soundtracked by heavy breathing and the steady rhythm of feet on pavements - became a kind of metaphor for depression.

One cliche attached to bookish people is that they are lonely, but for me books were my way out of being lonely.

The way out is never through yourself.

I wanted to be dead. No. That's not quite right. I didn't want to be dead, I just didn't want to be alive.

Goals are the source of misery. An unattained goal causes pain, but actually achieving it brings only a brief satisfaction.

A million people a year kill themselves. Between ten and twenty million people a year try to. Worldwide, men are over three times more likely to kill themselves than women.

Hate is a pointless emotion to have inside you. It is like eating a scorpion to punish it for stinging you.

There is no standard normal. Normal is subjective. There are seven billion versions of normal on this planet.

Ambition is the driving engine behind every great success.

A good marriage is really good after serving together in Washington, D.C.

I don't lecture and I don't grind any axes. I just want to entertain.

Every reader, if he has a strong mind, reads himself into the book, and amalgamates his thoughts with those of the author.

When good befalls a man he calls it Providence, when evil fate.

I loved playing Chandler. I grew up playing that part.

I hated school right away. Religion had a lot to do with it because I felt like everybody was always lying to me.

I don't develop; I am.

When we hear phrases like 'New World Order,' we release the safety catches on our revolvers.

If anything runs deeper than a mathematician’s love of variables, it’s a scientist’s love of constants.