I think the only person a writer has an obligation to is himself. If what I write doesn't fulfill something in me, if I don't honestly feel it's the best I can do, then I'm miserable.

She is pure Alice in Wonderland, and her appearance and demeanor are a nicely judged mix of the Red Queen and a Flamingo.

Failure is the condiment that gives success its flavor.

A conversation is a dialogue, not a monologue. That's why there are so few good conversations: due to scarcity, two intelligent talkers seldom meet.

I believe more in the scissors than I do in the pencil.

The wind is us-- it gathers and remembers all our voices, then sends them talking and telling through the leaves and the fields.

Anyone who ever gave you confidence, you owe them a lot.

I love New York, even though it isn't mine, the way something has to be, a tree or a street or a house, something, anyway, that belongs to me because I belong to it.

When you've got nowhere to turn, turn on the gas.

Well, I'm about as tall as a shotgun, and just as noisy.

A man who doesn't dream is like a man who doesn't sweat. He stores up a lot of poison.

College isn't half as much fun as they told us it was going to be.""It's not one-hundredth as much fun.

They don't ask much of you. They only want you to hate the things you love and to love the things you despise.

Rarely has a U.S. president been so wrong about so much at the expense of so many.

To shine is better than to reflect.

I'm a natural novelist. I'm interested in the person and the group, and how they mesh. And one of the ways I don't want them to mesh is for the person to be subsumed into the group.

The real question is should we trust people who don't like cheese?

The proportion of genius to the vulgar is like one to a million.

Men of wit, learning and virtue might strike out every offensive or unbecoming passage from plays.

I think Enlightenment as an epistemic ideal involves rejecting the appeal to a fundamental stratum of non-conceptual self-evidence.

Many shed tears merely for show, and have dry eyes when no one's around to observe them.