I think it's easy to stop smoking; it's just hard not to commit a felony after you stop.

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.

Human knowledge is but a ripple on the water's surface. To go deeper, we must accept the fact that we don't know everything

Every tough situation, toughen the soul.

Syrian refugees might be Isis, they may be the great Trojan horse of all time.

...to speak of them out loud, to speak of their hunger and pain and loneliness and humour, to make them visible so that can not be ravaged in the dark without great consequence.

There is no way to find the best design except to try out as many designs as possible and discard the failures.

Modeling is always something I've really admired because I've seen my mum and sister do it.

I make a mean cup of coffee, if you give me the right ingredients.

Well, I don't know that I'm OK any more than anybody else is OK but I've led at least a happy life and a very full one.

Even the most fickle are faithful to a few bad habits.

I fear vastly more a futile, incompetent old age than I do any form of death.