So, what, you got cigarette burns, too?" Gitanes said. Chip showed his palm, "It's nothing." "Self-inflicted. You pathetic American." "Different kind of prison" Chip said.

I guess my life hasn’t always been happy, or easy, or exactly what I want. At a certain point, I just have to try not to think too much about certain things, or else they’ll break my heart.

Fiction is a solution, the best solution, to the problem of existential solitude.

It's doubtful that anyone with an internet connection at his workplace is writing good fiction.

Integrity's a neutral value. Hyenas have integrity, too. They're pure hyena.

Nice people don't necessarily fall in love with nice people.

The personality susceptible to the dream of limitless freedom is a personality also prone, should the dream ever sour, to misanthropy and rage.

The Mekons were kind of like the background music of my life.

Depression presents itself as a realism regarding the rottenness of the world in general and the rottenness of your life in particular.

Reading enables me to maintain a sense of something substantive– my ethical integrity, my intellectual integrity.

Fiction is a particularly effective way for strangers to connect across time and distance

You can always be a better person, a better version of you, focus on that you do that makes you feel good, cultivateactivities that make you feel in peaceand make them part of your daily life.

You don't know what the pattern of flour and chicken is going to be, but you know you're going to get some good fried chicken.

You have to treat yourself every once in a while, get to the fun stuff!

Only the free mind knows what Love is.

If everyone can make music. Make better music.

Be able to recognize many of the major constellations and know the stories behind them

When we try to look farther into the universe we come to what appears to be the end of space but actually it's the beginning of time.

If I had to imagine omniscient, omnipresent, omnipotent power in the universe that chose to make my mother suffer, I don't know how I would make that make sense in the universe.

I've worked in animation for a long time. I started in Spain and I wanted to make feature films. That desire to figure out how to make animated features brought me to the U.S. to work for Disney.

My husband's family is military. Preparation is just, from that family perspective, it's just a part of what makes sense to do. You buy insurance for your house; you have a go bag.