The illusion is an agreement between the reader and writer that this [story] will be like life. The emotional temperature drops when you have footnotes.

We are most alive when we're in love.

Life is a nacho. It can be yummy-crunchy or squishy-yucky. It just depends on how long it takes for you to start eating it.

Rain is grace; rain is the sky descending to the earth; without rain, there would be no life.

You cannot help but learn more as take the world into your hands. Take it up reverently, for it is and old piece of clay, with millions of thumbprints on it.

A leader is one who, out of madness or goodness, volunteers to take upon himself the woe of the people. There are few men so foolish, hence the erratic quality of leadership in the world.

Most of American life consists of driving somewhere and then returning home, wondering why the hell you went.

The scissors cut the long-grown hair; The razor scrapes the remnant fuzz. Small-jawed, weak-chinned, big-eyed, I stare At the forgotten boy I was.

It is easy to love people in memory; the hard thing is to love them when they are there in front of you.

Inspiration arrives as a packet of material to be delivered.

So much love, too much love, it is our madness, it is rotting us out, exploding us like dandelion polls.

Without dark clouds in our lives we would never know the joy of sunshine. We can become callous and unteachable if we do not learn from pain.

Simple" Kate had wanted to say, "I'm already dead.

Everything passes everything wears out everything breaks.(Tout passe tout lasse tout casse.)

Some people care too much. I think it's called love.

Write the best story that you can and write it as straight as you can.

Because that day with Willem, I may have pretended to be someone named Lulu, but I had never been more honest in my life. Maybe that's the thing with liberation. It comes at a price.

I don't think I should be underestimated.

Maybe that's what being alive is about: so we can track down those movments that are dying.

Innovation is saying 'no' to 1,000 things.

People think I'm nuts because I can sit in a room and be happy by myself.