If I have three ideas and I'm working on one more than the others, that sort of tells me that I should work on that one.

A monster is a person who has stopped pretending.

It is failure that guides evolution; perfection provides no incentive for improvement, and nothing is perfect.

You are a New Yorker when what was there before is more real and solid than what is here now.

Memory is the most malicious cutter of all, preserving, recasting, panning in slow motion across the awful bits so that we retain every detail.

In other words, fiction is payback for those who have wronged you.

We never see other people anyway, only the monsters we make of them.

What isn't said is as important as what is said.

Sanctimony and self-regard are as American as smallpox blankets and supersize meals.

A society manufactures the heroes it requires.

Google "brooklyn writer" and you'll get, Did you mean: the future of literature as we know it?

Just because it's fiction doesn't mean it's any less true.

Change is disturbing when it is done to us, exhilarating when it is done by us.

Life happens.

People don't believe in positive changes anymore.

Less-creative people can't shift gears. Very creative people move between these two states intuitively.

If I play you a piece of music, that's when you can truly look inside me.

The good neighbor looks beyond the external accidents and discerns those inner qualities that make all men human and, therefore, brothers.

I can never stop working hard. Each day I feel that I have to improve. Hardwork...Determination...I gotta keep pushing myself.

You're strong—you're so, so strong. It's why I love you.

I am carried in my shadow like a violin in its black case