I've always been very upfront about the way I write, and I've always used the tools humorists use, such as exaggeration.

The Greeks had invented democracy, built the Acropolis and called it a day.

Real love amounts to withholding the truth, even when you're offered the perfect opportunity to hurt someone's feelings.

A zoo is a good place to make a spectacle of yourself, as the people around you have creepier, more photogenic things to look at.

There seemed to be some correlation between devotion to God and a misguided zeal for marshmallows.

All of us take pride and pleasure in the fact that we are unique, but I'm afraid that when all is said and done the police are right: it all comes down to fingerprints.

Remember that the most important thing is to try and love other people as much as they love you.

Everyone looks retarded once you set your mind to it.

I started writing when I was twenty, and my first book came out seventeen years later.

Like all of my friends, she's a lousy judge of character.

A good [short story] would take me out of myself and then stuff me back in, outsized, now, and uneasy with the fit.

I love you every day as if it is Valentine’s day.

I'm a big fan of Courtney Love. I love Hole and I love her acting and I love her attitude. I just hope I never meet her in a dark alley.

The walls between art and engineering exist only in our minds.

The most significant New York club for me was Paradise Garage, where they played house music. This was around '84 or '85.

The more visible signs of protest are gone, but I think there is a realization that the tactics of the late sixties are not sufficient to meet the challenges of the seventies.

I tend to read more nonfiction, really, because when I'm writing I don't like to read other fiction.

We get a lot of overseas people wanting to order cakes.

Obamanomics, his imposition of European-style socialism is not working for African-Americans. It is not working for Latinos and African-Americans.

The very word possibility creates a mental climate conducive to creativity.

Fiction is about intimacy with characters, events, places.