Structural dissatisfaction: Returning to circumstances that once pleased you, after having experienced a more thrilling or opulent way of life, and finding that you can no longer tolerate them.

I was a stepchild in two different families. The hardest thing about being a stepchild is you know that in some way everything would be easier if you didnt exist.

If I had a view like this to look down on every day, I would have the energy and inspiration to conquer the world. The trouble is, when you most need such a view, no one gives it to you.

Read at the level at which you want to write. Reading is the nourishment that feeds the kind of writing you want to do.

Goon Squad' took about three years to write and that's the short end. My second novel, 'Look at Me,' took six years.

I don’t want to fade away, I want to flame away - I want my death to be an attraction, a spectacle, a mystery. A work of art.

Because you can't write habitually and well all the time, you have to be willing to write badly. That's how you get the regularity that enables you to be present for the good stuff.

Reading is the nourishment that lets you do interesting work.

I'm always happy," Sasha said. "Sometimes I just forget.

The answers were maddeningly absent—it was like trying to remember a song that you knew made you feel a certain way, without a title, artist, or even a few bars to bring it back.

Vinegar: that's what fear smells like.

Only if the human mind had a Garbage Collector.But then, do we know what references we still hold on?

Irony of the day: arthritis medication with a cap that old people can't get off, because of their arthritis.

Do you know the only thing that gives me pleasure? It's to see my dividends coming in.

Orchestras have often been used to conjure up the natural world: Swans, sharks, trout, but not, as far as I know, the often maligned jellyfish.

This is truly a blessing. Breyon Prescott, Peter Edge and Tom Corson believe in me and have introduced me to a home that also believes and knows exactly what to do with the type of music I'm doing.

There's not much makeup in the army, is there? No. They only have that nighttime look, and that's a bit slapdash, isn't it?

In the early West, law and politics were parallel roads to usefulness as well as distinction.

Writing a poem is always a process of subtracting: you start with all of language available to you, and you choose a smaller field.

I also dreamt about finally meeting the leftist Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Žižek. He is a great role model for me.

You can meet lots of actors who are in their own world and do their own thing, and they have no idea what's going on and they don't know anyone's name around them.