I will read biographies or autobiographies while I'm writing, but mostly I put books in a to-read queue, like Rachel Cusk's new novel, "Outline."

The key is to get to know people and trust them to be who they are. Instead, we trust people to be who we want them to be - and when they're not, we cry.

Every day I try to do breathing exercises, meditation, and yoga. These things sound awfully cliche, but they help me slow down and try to point to a truth.

I love dogs. They live in the moment and don't care about anything except affection and food. They're loyal and happy. Humans are just too damn complicated.

I lost my virginity when I was 14. And I haven't been able to find it.

Anxiety is part of creativity, the need to get something out, the need to be rid of something or to get in touch with something within.

I understand the self-loathing and the resentment, and the discipline that it takes to sit down in front of a typewriter or computer every single day, whether it's going well or not going well.

I may be learning guitar, but I'll never be able to sing.

I think the real heroic teachers are the ones who work with kids, like my mom and my sister do.

A dream is the mind's way of answering a question it hasn't yet figured out how to ask.

What makes me mad is arrogance, pretension, putting on airs.

Silicon Valley is a great place for Bitcoin, since everyone understands computers, and there are lots of libertarians running around.

If you can't go home, there is nowhere to go, and nowhere is the biggest place in the world-indeed, nowhere is the world.

You can never know how your clock runs. But it does run - and always faster than you think.

Kim Kardashian is single again. Hey, great. Maybe that will give the NBA players something to do during the lockout.

Nine people can't make a baby in a month.

If you Google the word "fluffy," I'm the first thing that pops up. It's me, dogs and rabbits.

The Lord of the Rings is of course a fundamentally religious and Catholic work; unconsciously so at first, but consciously in the revision.

The U.S. incarceration binge is not tied to crime. It's a strategy to control the surplus population in a capitalist system that is breaking down.

The best thing you have to offer the world is yourself. You don't have to copy anyone else. If you do, you're second best. To achieve success is to be first, and that's being yourself.

One time Robert Plant was set to check into the same room after I checked out, so I removed every light bulb and ordered up a bunch of stinky cheese and put it under the mattress.