I learned to distrust writers who talked about how they squeezed the blood onto the typewriter. They just don't want you to know how much fun they have - you'll resent it.

Artists can color the sky red because they know it's blue. Those of us who aren't artists must color things the way they really are or people might think we're stupid.

I told the doctor I was overtired, anxiety-ridden, compulsively active, constantly depressed, with recurring fits of paranoia. Turns out I'm normal.

Design is important because chaos is so hard.

I grew up to have my father's looks, my father's speech patterns, my father's posture, my father's opinions, and my mother's contempt for my father.

We are all continually embarking on first drafts, in every aspect of our lives.

Maturity is only a short break in adolescence.

If you are not able to communicate successfully between yourself and yourself, how are you supposed to make it with the strangers outside?

Jesus died to forgive our sins. Dare we make his martyrdom meaningless by not committing them?

Imagination continually frustrates tradition; that is its function.

Writing, I explained, was mainly an attempt to out-argue one's past; to present events in such a light that battles lost in life were either won on paper or held to a draw.

Death is an opportunity to shed all guilt

People can't live with change if there's not a changeless core inside them.

At its most basic, the allure of fundamentalism, whether religious or ideological, liberal or conservative, is that it provides an appealing order to things that are actually disorderly.

True beauty in a woman is reflected in the caring that she lovingly gives, the passion that she shows.

How exactly does one break the news to her husband that she's standing in a closet with the dead body of one of their dinner guests?

Everybody lives for something better to come.

La' , tout n'est qu'ordre et beaute , Luxe, calme et volupte . There where all is order and beauty. Lush, calm and voluptuous.

One sweetly solemn thought, comes to me o'er and o'er; I am nearer home today, than I ever have been before.

In time the bull is brought to wear the yoke. [Lat., Tempore ruricolae patiens fit taurus aratri.]

Thoughts! what are they? They are my constant friends, who, when harsh fate its dull brow bends, uncloud me with a smiling ray, and in the depth of midnight force a day.