Italics provide a wonderful advantage: you see, right away, that the words are in a rush. When something exists at a slant, you can't help but consider irony.

People forget years and remember moments.

When I was teaching at Harvard in the 1970s, I went to Project Incorporated in Cambridge and took photography classes. I didn't even know how to aim the camera in those days.

Because I don’t work with an outline, writing a story is like crossing a stream, now I’m on this rock, now I’m on this rock, now I’m on this rock.

Clichés so often befall vain people.

I think almost always that what gets me going with a story is the atmosphere, the visual imagery, and then I people it with characters, not the other way around.

I don't write about things that I have the answers to or things that are very close to home. It just wouldn't be any adventure. It wouldn't have any vitality.

There is some reason, obviously, that you are drawn to your material, but the way in which you explore it might come to be quite different from what you would expect.

Nobody can assume that, to a writer, everything is off-limits.

I like a lot of Margaret Atwood, I like much of Alice Munro. Again, if you were to ask me about male writers, there's often a novel I admire, but not all of their works.

It's often been said that I'm an extremely depressing, cynical writer. I've never known what to make of that.

Listen to your fears, they are the doorway to your freedom.

Good brands reflect the histories of the time and the group of people that made them. They can not be copied. They can not be recycled.

Who has the right to tell me that I don't deserve this choice?

We cannot make it rain but we can see to it that the rain falls on prepared soil.

I’m living in separate universes, and I have no idea where I actually belong.

My natural mother died one month after I was born, apparently due to giving birth at an advanced age.

The scars are a way of reminding me that the past is real. They are honorable.

I literally get up and get to do the one thing I dreamed about doing every day. And that is being a part of a television show and a radio show that is based in Hollywood.

Space Jam is my favorite movie. Don't ask me why, it just is.