I don't think that I can be settled and I don't think that I would ever want to be.

Feminism now seems to be defined as success is defined: as being as good at capitalism as men are. I feel very estranged from it.

I understand maybe some people are more impressionable than my hard, cynical self, but maybe they need to figure out how to be less of that.

I was twenty-one when I was hired by Planned Parenthood. It was my first work experience outside of either temping or working for my father at his store.

Once you leave, you're no longer of that country, but you are never actually of the country that you go to, and if you go back, you're not anywhere. You never belong to anything.

American culture never necessarily made sense to me, but they should warn you: leaving comes with a huge sense of alienation that never goes away.

Talk to people who know more than you. I feel like we're in this stupid sea of opinion, like "My opinion is valid because it's mine and I have it."

You don't have to go to New York and you don't have to go to LA or London. Go somewhere cheap. Go somewhere with free art museums and then just go to art museums.

Go to a place and just send out emails. That's my entire life. I go to countries and I ask, "Who would I know who lives here?" Not even do I know, but who exists and is on the planet.

There's this resistance to actually talking to people who are smarter than you about things and I don't know why that is.

I knew my motivations for going to each place and what I was looking for. If I don't do that then I generally don't write about my travels.

Being interested is more important than being interesting.

The guy's (Shane Spencer) ridiculous. No one hits home runs like that. I'm telling you, man, it's ridiculous.

Societies advance through innovation every bit as much as economies do.

I'd like to have a beer-holder on my guitar like they have on boats.

I purpose publishing these Letters here in the world before I return to you. Two editions. One, unedited, for Bible readers and their children; the other, expurgated, for persons of refinement

In bridge clubs and in councils of state, the passions are the same.

I'd wanted to create a storm so that I could become more famous and richer.

Archetypes are always [in my film-making]. It's sometimes interesting to just flip them a little bit and see the underside.

The question of manuscript changes is very important for literary criticism, the psychology of creation and other aspects of the study of literature.