Talent is its own expectation, Jim: you either live up to it or it waves a hankie, receding forever.

I do things like get in a taxi and say, "The library, and step on it.

It can become an exercise in trying to get the reader to like and admire you instead of an exercise in creative art.

One of the things that makes Wittgenstein a real artist to me is that he realized that no conclusion could be more horrible than solipsism.

If your fidelity to perfectionism is too high, you never do anything.

I know I'm paranoid, but am I paranoid enough?

This might be one way to start talking about differences between the early postmodern writers of the fifties and sixties and their contemporary descendants.

How odd I can have all this inside me and to you it’s just words.

Everybody is identical in their secret unspoken belief that way deep down they are different from everyone else.

In the day-to-day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship.

In reality, there is no such thing as not voting: you either vote by voting, or you vote by staying home and tacitly doubling the value of some Diehard's vote.

If you don't start, you're finished.

I am my own self.

Who on earth can bring you down when God is already lifting you up to receive bigger and bigger blessings?

People say, "Do you know how much a million dollars is?" I don't have a clue. How many Big Macs will it buy me?

Writing is a journey into the unknown.

The reason to drive this point home with a vivid and frank comparison is many New Yorkers are still not confronting the reality of how serious our crisis is. It was an exhortation to face reality.

But the silence spoke volumes.

Family is always first.

Getting older means you don't have to shave your legs anymore.

Words had started swimming off the page, circling my head, the letters doing one-eighties as if they were riding skateboards.