I'm ashamed and embarrassed to say that I've read very little of David Foster Wallace's work. It's a huge gap in my education, one of many.

Somewhere along the way America became a giant mall with a country attached.

It took me 10 years to write a story that pleased me - that I could look at after it was published and not cringe.

It is sort of weird being honored for the worst day of your life.

Late bloomer' is another way of saying 'slow learner.

By the end of the first decade of writing, I considered myself a confirmed failure in the eyes of the world.

I never listen to music when I'm writing.

Americans are incredibly polite as long as they get what they want.

There was no such thing as perfection in this world, only moments of such extreme transparency that you forgot yourself, a holy mercy if there ever was one.

If you could figure out how to live with family then you'd gone a long way toward finding your peace.

The funny thing is, about the time I let go of any aspiration toward worldly success, that's about the time I started writing decent work.

Those who have never known the deep intimacy and the intense companionship of happy mutual love have missed the best thing that life has to give.

Take from the church the miraculous, the supernatural, the incomprehensible, the unreasonable, the impossible, the unknowable, the absurd, and nothing but a vacuum remains.

Our Lord has written the promise of resurrection not in books alone but in every leaf in springtime.

Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work.

Patience and tenacity are worth more than twice their weight of cleverness.

Except that a human being is both the public and the private. We are both, private and public in the same person.

A lot of Pacific island nations are sinking below sea level; they could easily transition slowly into becoming floating nations.

The world I'm interested in is the one where things are not named.

Every new idea is impossibility until it is born.