It seems to me self-evident that if you have a life, things happen in it, and certain things do change; certain things end. People you know die.

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

Be the fire when they feel cold, you go out, they are without

I didn’t break his jaw, but if he lays a hand on you, it will be the first of many things to break,” Patch said.

Yes,I'm afraid you're right. Trial and error isn't a bad way to learn how to build an aircraft,but it can be a disastrous way to learn how to build a civilization.

Struggle is what it means to be alive and free.

You've had a lot of presidents that haven't take that tack [get along with Russia]. Look where we are now. Look where we are now. So, if I can - now, I love to negotiate things.

A saint abroad, and a devil at home.

We live in a day of itching ears, but I have no commission from God to scratch them.

I'll always try to follow my heart into things I love, and modelling is not something I'm dreaming of pursuing forever.

The God who gave us life gave us liberty. Can the liberties of a nation be secure when we have removed a conviction that these liberties are the gift of God?

The more we bestow the richer we become.