I was about 13, in some ways, when I wrote the first book. Approximately 18 when I wrote the second.

I guess my life hasn’t always been happy, or easy, or exactly what I want. At a certain point, I just have to try not to think too much about certain things, or else they’ll break my heart.

Fiction is a solution, the best solution, to the problem of existential solitude.

It's doubtful that anyone with an internet connection at his workplace is writing good fiction.

Integrity's a neutral value. Hyenas have integrity, too. They're pure hyena.

Nice people don't necessarily fall in love with nice people.

The personality susceptible to the dream of limitless freedom is a personality also prone, should the dream ever sour, to misanthropy and rage.

The Mekons were kind of like the background music of my life.

Depression presents itself as a realism regarding the rottenness of the world in general and the rottenness of your life in particular.

Reading enables me to maintain a sense of something substantive– my ethical integrity, my intellectual integrity.

Fiction is a particularly effective way for strangers to connect across time and distance

Even intellectuals should have learned by now that objective rationality is not the default position of the human mind, much less the bedrock of human affairs.

I didn't know silence could be that loud.

The science of the mind can only have for its proper goal the understanding of human nature by every human being, and through its use, brings peace to every human soul.

I don't think 50-50 relationships exist. Men have an incredibly variety of options. It's much harder for a woman to do both things. I think traditional relationships work best.

The real threat to reading isn’t the time we spend hanging out, it’s the time we spend online.

Sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants.

Let flattery, the handmaid of the vices, be far removed (from friendship). [Lat., Assentatio, vitiorum adjutrix, procul amoveatur.]

I'm not in love. It's a crush which is why it hurts. Crushes crush. Otherwise they'd be called awesomes. "I have an awesome on him.

The highest thought is always a thought which contains joy.

God is living in New York, and he's a Mets fan.