My belief that the publishing industry is run by prigs and cowards dates back to many years before I even had the idea for the book.

Feminism now seems to be defined as success is defined: as being as good at capitalism as men are. I feel very estranged from it.

I understand maybe some people are more impressionable than my hard, cynical self, but maybe they need to figure out how to be less of that.

I was twenty-one when I was hired by Planned Parenthood. It was my first work experience outside of either temping or working for my father at his store.

Once you leave, you're no longer of that country, but you are never actually of the country that you go to, and if you go back, you're not anywhere. You never belong to anything.

American culture never necessarily made sense to me, but they should warn you: leaving comes with a huge sense of alienation that never goes away.

Talk to people who know more than you. I feel like we're in this stupid sea of opinion, like "My opinion is valid because it's mine and I have it."

You don't have to go to New York and you don't have to go to LA or London. Go somewhere cheap. Go somewhere with free art museums and then just go to art museums.

Go to a place and just send out emails. That's my entire life. I go to countries and I ask, "Who would I know who lives here?" Not even do I know, but who exists and is on the planet.

There's this resistance to actually talking to people who are smarter than you about things and I don't know why that is.

I knew my motivations for going to each place and what I was looking for. If I don't do that then I generally don't write about my travels.

Maybe one reason I had avoided anger was that like a lot of people I had thought there were only two responses to anger: to deny it or to strike out thoughtlessly. But other responses are possible.

Coding is a privilege, but that privilege is not available to most Americans.

There was some open space between what he knew and what he tried to believe, but nothing could be done about it, and if you can't fix it you've got to stand it.

When the alarm bell rings, you'd better wake up and realize that the customer expects more from you today than he did the day before. You'd better find ways to be better.

It does not seem to me as if I were living in the country in which I was born.

In my bright, utopian future world, they will hand out college educations like cups of water at the end of the L.A. Marathon.

There are so many businesses that are succeeding on Yelp that don't pay us a dollar, and we're really excited about that.

Never discourage anyone who continually makes progress, no matter how slow... even if that someone is yourself!

Jimmy: When you die, I die Sora: Wow, that's some serious relationship!

Contemplation is the loving sense of this life, this presence and this eternity.