Good writing isn’t a science. It’s an art, and the horizon is infinite. You can always get better.

I do things like get in a taxi and say, "The library, and step on it.

It can become an exercise in trying to get the reader to like and admire you instead of an exercise in creative art.

One of the things that makes Wittgenstein a real artist to me is that he realized that no conclusion could be more horrible than solipsism.

If your fidelity to perfectionism is too high, you never do anything.

I know I'm paranoid, but am I paranoid enough?

This might be one way to start talking about differences between the early postmodern writers of the fifties and sixties and their contemporary descendants.

How odd I can have all this inside me and to you it’s just words.

Everybody is identical in their secret unspoken belief that way deep down they are different from everyone else.

In the day-to-day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship.

In reality, there is no such thing as not voting: you either vote by voting, or you vote by staying home and tacitly doubling the value of some Diehard's vote.

She said this in the same way you might say Fields of Punishment or Hades's gym shorts.

With wine and food, the confidence of my own table, and the necessity of reassuring my wife, I grew by insensible degrees courageous and secure.

Sometimes the truth hurts. It hurts because they have a weakness - and I exploit weakness.

I need to go outside. I wouldn't say I'm an outdoors person, but I like to go outside.

The fatal metaphor of progress, which means leaving things behind us, has utterly obscured the real idea of growth, which means leaving things inside us.

Life is short, youth is finite, and opportunities endless. Have you found the intersection of your passion and the potential for world-shaping positive impact?

One must dare to show what he wants. You have to go and ask for things rather than wait for them to happen.

You must work, we must all work, to make the world worthy of its children.

Life was never meant to be a struggle, just a gentle progression from one point to another, much like walking through a valley on a sunny day.

Now I am silent, hate Up to my neck, Thick, thick. I do not speak.