That's the wonderful thing with nerds: they're enthusiasts. Not having a life means you get to love things with a passion and nobody bothers you about it.

The definition of a page-turner really aught to be that this page is so good, you can't bear to leave it behind, but then the next page is there and it might be just as amazing as this one.

Our response to the world is essentially one of wonder, of confronting the mysterious with a sense, not of being small, or insignificant, but of being part of a rich and complex narrative.

All you have to do is choose the right day, the right weather, and you come upon a hidden place in the morning light where time stopped long before you were born

The trick and the beauty of language is that it seems to order the whole universe, misleading us into believing that we live in sight of a rational space, a possible harmony.

As I child, I came to this idea with a horrified fascination. Once upon a time, I wasn’t here. Before that, my parents weren’t here. And before that…

If the components of the body were organs and veins and cells, then the components of thought and language were words and grammar.

Poetry stands or falls by its music.

My poems tend to be more celebratory and lyrical, and the novels so far pretty dark. Poetry doesn't seem to me to be an appropriate tool for exploring that.

With fiction, I tend to get to my desk and start writing. Poetry I write in my head, often while walking, so that my poems have an organic quality, hopefully.

I realised I'd spent a lot of time in my poetry trying to find a way of talking about that whereof we cannot speak.

The same president who has insisted that core moralism drives him has brought America to its lowest moral standing in history.

Even God lends a hand to honest boldness.

I want to die with my blue jeans on.

Don't wear excessive make-up as you grow older. Young women can wear whatever make-up they want, but if you are older, you will regret it.

The body is like the earth ... as vulnerable to overbuilding, being carved into parcels, cut off, overmined, and shorn of its power as any landscape.

Mixtape legend, underground kings... Looking for the right way to do the wrong things

Above all, there is no exception to this rule: that the idea of political superiority always resolves itself into the idea of psychological superiority.

The world is an inherently unfair place.

If the clinician, as observer, wishes to see things as they really are, he must make a tabula rasa of his mind and proceed without any preconceived notions whatever.