I'm not an easy man. I can be an entertaining one, though it's been my experience that most people don't want to be entertained. They want to be comforted.

At the risk of appearing disingenuous, I don't really think of myself as 'writing humor.' I'm simply reporting on the world I observe, which is frequently hilarious.

And there comes a time in your life when you realize that if you don't take the opportunity to be happy, you may never get another chance again.

People sometimes get in the habit of being loyal to a mistake.

You use simple brushstrokes in a screenplay for things over which you would take much greater pains in a novel.

Have you ever noticed that when people use the expression 'I have to say', what follows usually needn't be said?

What if all everybody needed in the world was to be sure of one friend? What if you were the one, and you refused to say those simple words?

My books are elegiac in the sense that they're odes to a nation that even I sometimes think may not exist anymore except in my memory and my imagination.

Worse, I have to admit to feeling the jealousy of one crab for another that has managed to climb out of the barrel.

Bookstores, like libraries, are the physical manifestation of the wide world's longest, most thrilling conversation.

I was the one who did come through that door. You were the one she was waiting for.

Painting n: the art of protecting flat surfaces from the weather and exposing them to the critic.

God is another name for human intelligence raised above all error and imperfection, and extended to all possible truth.

Attention is a little-noticed and underrated mental asset.

Screwy," I said. "Is that a medical term?" "Of course.

You learn about gratitude by giving. You learn about humility by receiving, and in the pecking order of human qualities, I'd probably put humility somewhere before gratitude.

Very few people around the world know that cancer kills more people than HIV/AIDS, malaria, and tuberculosis combined - until we get everyone to realize that, it will be tough to get them to act.

Let's just be smart this time. I'm looking for smart.

Punctuality is closely related to faithfulness and dependability. Being tardy can be linked to uninterest, apathy, slothfulness and procrastination.

Good medicine is bitter to the mouth, but has an effect on the disease. Faithful words hurt one's ears, but have value for one's conduct.

Never trust a journalist.