I try really hard to cultivate the pure love of reading, to make time for it, because it would be really sad to still be a writer without remembering why, on some visceral, emotional level.

There are ideas it will be easy to say in the future that we just don't have the language for now.

If I could start over today, I would choose literature again. If the answers exist in the world or in the universe, I still think that's where we're going to find them.

The novel form is about the protagonist's struggle to transform his arbitrary, fragmented, given experience into a narrative as meaningful as his favorite books.

Poetry is another space, like love, where we extend that extra credit to the writer.

Humor is really important to me. All my favorite writers are writers I consider to be funny, including Tolstoy and Dostoevsky, even though that's not necessarily their rap.

In a lot of ways, being a writer is a lousy job - grueling, emotionally taxing, terrible hours, no health care - so if it wasn't about love, what would be the point?

At any given time, there are ideas and images that can only be communicated indirectly.

When you invent something, you're drawing on reservoirs of knowledge that you already have. It's only when you're faithful to the truth that something can come to you from the outside.

I am a great admirer of Henry Jeffreys and have been eagerly awaiting his booze and empire book for many years!

I didn't care about truth; I cared about beauty. It took me many years--it took the experience of lived time--to realize that they really are the same thing.

A wise teacher learns in the midst of teaching

No matter what happened, he was Dex and I was Perry and that combination only led to trouble.

The dream too thinks twice, gets filtered to go softto be seated on children's eyes.

We must never forget that the dance is the cradle of Negro music.

I don't think it's that strange that a show has sort of a bumpy beginning. It's just part and parcel of the process.

Francois Rabelais. He was a poet. And his last words were "I go to seek a Great Perhaps." That's why I'm going. So I don't have to wait until I die to start seeking a Great Perhaps.

Reincarnation is a story we tell; then in the end it's the story itself that is the reincarnation.

A man who has been shot at is a new realist, and what do you say to a realist when the war is a war of ideals?

Custom is almost a second nature.

Female, I give you fair warning: you are playing with fire" - Tegan to Elise (Midnight Awakening