Reason is the lesser faith that steers us when we have already lost a greater one.

Only half of writing is saying what you mean. The other half is preventing people from reading what they expected you to mean.

Nothing important comes with instructions.

What is more yours than what always holds you back?

The best way to know your faults is to notice which ones you accuse others of.

Writing is like washing windows in the sun. With every attempt to perfect clarity, you make a new smear.

When I am trying to write I turn on music so I can hear what is keeping me from hearing.

Sophistication is upscale conformity.

The happy and the suffering probably understand life equally well, but the sufferers may see a little more clearly how little it is that they understand.

It is the empty seats that listen most raptly.

All work is the avoidance of harder work.

What's the bravest thing you ever did?He spat in the road a bloody phlegm. Getting up this morning, he said.

Read obsessively. It will make you a better human and a better writer.

The past is a great place and I don't want to erase it or to regret it, but I don't want to be its prisoner either.

Life is a tragedy when seen in close-up, but a comedy in long-shot.

I have those days where I'm PMSing and bloated.

I feel like a drunken man who doesn't have a drink.

Knowing that language has done so much, we want to believe that it can do everything.

Nature works with five polymers. Only five polymers. In the natural world, life builds from the bottom up, and it builds in resilience and multiple uses.

The stuff that I propose are things that I'm ready to govern with. They're not tools to get elected. They are programs and plans to do when you get elected.

When I started you were more in touch with the people you were playing to. There wasn't the distance or the separation that there is now.