Now that I am conscious of the world of chronic pain, when I see somebody walking down the street who's having trouble, I feel a sadness for them. I notice.

Pepsi brings your ancestors back from the dead.

Boring people don't know they're boring. That's the problem with boring people.

I'm trying always to leave out what I think is extraneous. And to find what I think is the most wonderful language to make a beautiful sentence.

I think it's true that unless human beings experience something, they simply don't understand what people are going through.

I'm the author of my own misery.

I don't think anybody says to Coetzee or Dostoyevsky or Kafka, "Your characters aren't likeable." It's not about your character winning a popularity contest. That's not the writer's job.

It's not the writer who determines how good she is anyway. Writers don't determine that. It's readers who determine that.

Do the obvious, you won't forget it. Do the obvious, you won't regret it. Obvious, obvious, obvious.

Nonfiction gives you subjects. Writing fiction I can have more fun, but I have to invent my subject.

Without curiosity a writer is dead.

There is nothing more beautiful than someone who goes out of their way to make life beautiful for others.

Before you reach the point of forgiveness, you go through the phase where you pray... for every possible misfortune and ill luck to strike them dead while you sit and watch.

Corporate money is controlling everything.

I set up stations, buy a big vat of chili, and then guests do what they want to do - and I still get to party.

We swung between madness and suicide ... it was beautiful!

He [Barack Obama] is been boffo at fundraising - 220 fundraisers, and he raised something approaching $1 billion.

I'm not a leftist; I'm where the righteous ought to be.

Only the State legally obtains its revenue by coercion.

The owner of Spotify is worth something like 3 billion dollars ... he's richer than Paul McCartney and he's 30 and he's never written a song.

Old friendships are like meats served up repeatedly, cold, comfortless, and distasteful. The stomach turns against them.