Freedom or community, community or freedom. One must decide the way one wants to live. I chose community.

As a person, I do ascribe to a lot of magical thinking myself.

In the end, fiction is the craft of telling truth through lies.

While writing, writers are living inside a character or characters, and when the book ekes into the world, writers are living inside the reader. That's more than connecting.

Amor animi arbitrio sumitu, non ponitur; we choose to love; we do not choose to cease loving.

Who, in the midst of passion, is vigilant against illness? Who listens to the reports of recently decimated populations in Spain, India, Bora Bora, when new lips, tongues and poems fill the world?

If there's a black cat that crosses the street in my path, I will turn around and walk 20 minutes out of my way to not cross it.

Depressing thought: my friends were the girls I ate lunch with, all buddies from kindergarten who knew one another so well we weren't sure if we even liked one another anymore.

Sometimes you have to let time carry you past your troubles.

I'm a private person, a shy person. Sometimes, reading for eleven hours straight feels to me like the perfect way to spend a day.

I love Twitter. It's like having a closet full of clever friends that you can visit twice a day, then shove back into the darkness when you're tired of them.

Reality leaves a lot to the imagination.

So everything lets us down, including curiosity and honesty and what we love best. Yes, said the voice, but cheer up, it's fun in the end.

I'm not a competitive person, so I don't feel any pressure to win. I won't sink into a depression if we don't win.

Traveling through space is stupifyingly monotonous.

They say you better listen to the voice of reason But they don't give you any choice 'cause they think that it's treason. So you had better do as you are told. You better listen to the radio.

Learn how to focus - that creates a lot of power. Focus on a candle flame for 15 minutes or a pretty colored rock, or one point, or a chakra.

Nothing on earth consumes a man more quickly than the passion of resentment.

The press doesn't like me, because I am a weirdo to them, so they do everything to create their own fictional Kola Boof.

[On President Bush's plan to get to Mars in 10 years] Stupid. Robots would do a better job and be much cheaper because you don't have to bring them back.

Vulnerability is kind of one of those things of, how do I really feel in this moment?