My mother is an office manager, my father a professor of economics and financial planner.

New Orleans cuisine is Creole rather than Cajun.

In the Netherlands I read the first chapter of Exquisite Corpse to an audience that laughed in all the places I thought were funny - an experience I've never had in America!

The night is the hardest time to be alive and 4am knows all my secrets.

You hold onto what you have; you do not give it up easily, even when you know it is poisoning you.

You can only maintain an immensely gothic attitude for so long before either killing yourself or beginning to feel like a poser.

Some nights are made for torture, or reflection, or the savoring of loneliness.

I can't heal your pain but I can see it. And you don't have to be lost. Not forever.

Young writers shouldn't be afraid of striving to emulate their favorites. It's a good way to learn, as long as you move on from it and don't publish too many of the results.

Never relinquish your terrors. That's when they catch you.

Ive tried to avoid labels, but they always find you.

God is the vessel of love that gives wings to our prayers

Top dog, top hat, move that muscle, move that fat.

I try never to worry in general. Worry is interest paid in advance on a debt that never comes due.

It's a travesty for the games. It's cutting into the heart of this community.

I don't see evidence of America being a poorer country than it was 20 years ago. I've seen impoverished devastation. I've seen places where things had been good and now they were very bad.

If I am given a formula, and I am ignorant of its meaning, it cannot teach me anything, but if I already know it what does the formula teach me?

Coffee just makes me happy.

When we mistake words for reality, we are subject to the tyranny of words.

Don't be normal. Be an example.

Im a total weirdo and have often felt like an outcast and a freak, and I love that. It makes things so much more exciting.