People in the upper classes can just as easily be indifferent to their own body, or treat themselves as badly, as people who don't have the money. There are always differences among differences.

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.

Calling a book "Young Adult" is just a fancy way of saying the book is censored.

Neither soldiers nor money can defend a king but only friends won by good deeds, merit, and honesty.

Two men look out the same prison bars one sees mud and the other stars.

A lot of people my age think stand up sucks.

Javascript is the duct tape of the Internet.

When you lose your mind, you'll come to your senses.

Here you find us sitting on a field of victory, amid the plunder of armies, and you wonder how we came by a few well-earned comforts!

Look at the way you live. You've sold out. Next thing I know you'll become a Republican." She shook her head. "Where are the values I raised you with?

I've thought for a long time that my body type would have worked well in the '70s. The idea that you could be a broad-shouldered, small-breasted woman and still wear really great outfits.

This most excellent canopy, the air, look you, this brave o-erhanging firmament, this majestical roof fretted with golden fire.