It means being conscious and aware enough to choose what you pay attention to and to choose how you construct meaning from experience.

I do things like get in a taxi and say, "The library, and step on it.

It can become an exercise in trying to get the reader to like and admire you instead of an exercise in creative art.

One of the things that makes Wittgenstein a real artist to me is that he realized that no conclusion could be more horrible than solipsism.

If your fidelity to perfectionism is too high, you never do anything.

I know I'm paranoid, but am I paranoid enough?

This might be one way to start talking about differences between the early postmodern writers of the fifties and sixties and their contemporary descendants.

How odd I can have all this inside me and to you it’s just words.

Everybody is identical in their secret unspoken belief that way deep down they are different from everyone else.

In the day-to-day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship.

In reality, there is no such thing as not voting: you either vote by voting, or you vote by staying home and tacitly doubling the value of some Diehard's vote.

I come from a place where everyone has great power, by your standards, and they steadfastly refuse to use it for self-aggrandizement ... anywhere ... ever.

People's computers are not getting more secure. They're getting more infected with viruses. They're getting more under the control of malware.

I guess after you've been doing something for 20 plus years, you have to work to stay interested.

Real folk music long ago went to Nashville and left no known survivors.

At one with the One, it didn't mean a thing besides a glass of Guinness on a sunny day.

You have to learn to accept your body. You have to learn to like what you see in the mirror. There are definitely times when I don't feel like myself, but you have to fake it until you make it.

I feel threatened, and sometimes it makes me angry because I can't do anything about that, there's just too many issues. But in a way I think my work is meant to get people out of that.

I found English to be a sort of Thomas Hardy aversion therapy.

I heart Jewish girls... oh my God.

Reality is always controlled by the people who are the most insane.