Success is a very fragile veneer. I get wary of people who embrace celebrity. It ruins people.

The only time you truly become an adult is when you finally forgive your parents for being just as flawed as everyone else.

Because there is no meaning to be found in the arbitrary nature of things., It's all random. Just as space is blue. And birds fly through it.

There is much to be said for solitude.

If there is an abiding theme in 'The Pursuit of Happiness,' it is the idea that you come into the world already shaped by other people's past histories.

Tragedy is one of the larger prices we pay for being alive. No one ever sidesteps tragedy. It is always there, shadowing us.

We all talk about how much we hate lies. Yet we prefer, so often, to be lied to....because it allows us to dodge all those painful truths we'd rather not hear.

Words matter, words have import.

I want to be a popular novelist who's also serious, or a serious novelist who's also very accessible.

All our stories are simultaneously unique and desperately similar, aren't they?

I've been known to write on the Underground in London and on the subway in New York. I have two or three cafes in Paris that I go into. I find a corner with a little shade, and I can work.

I thought that young people had more problems than old people...Then I looked around and saw that everybody who looked young had young problems and that everybody who looked old had old problems.

Ninety percent of the cases of polio are in security-vulnerable areas.

You wake up in the morning; what do you want to know? You want to know what happened overnight. You want to know if you're safe. You want to know if you're family's safe.

The cruelest thing a man can do to a woman is to portray her as perfection.

Everybody lives an epic.

Every song I put on a record could be a single and I just pack my bags for it... and the minute it takes off, I'm not gonna be home for a while.

I like to do projects I feel some connection to.

Even our most difficult moments bring us gifts. The trick, of course, is gratitude. Therein will you find both your peace and your joy.

I got sort of disinterested in working for the system.

All systems are oligarchy. There is no other.