The novel is resilient, and so are novelists.

Fictional characters are made of words, not flesh; they do not have free will, they do not exercise volition. They are easily born, and as easily killed off.

In order really to write one has to sink deep into the self and become lost there.

All my life I have lied. I lied to escape, I lied to be loved, I lied for placement and power; I lied to lie. It was a way of living; lies are life's almost-anagram.

The past beats inside me like a second heart.

If I was asked to say what was the greatest invention of human beings, I would say the sentence.

Everything we do is tinged with the knowledge that this may be the last time that we will do this, and that makes what we're doing incredibly sweet.

We carry the dead with us only until we die too, and then it is we who are borne along for a little while, and then our bearers in their turn drop, and so on into the unimaginable generations.

To take possession of a city of which you are not a native you must first fall in love there.

For memory, we use our imagination. We take a few strands of real time and carry them with us, then like an oyster we create a pearl around them.

A man is not much if he can't depend on himself, and nothing if others can't depend on him.

People think of all kinds of things at three in the morning. We all do. That's why we each have to figure out our own way of fighting it off.

Feelings are much like waves. We can't stop them from coming but we can choose which one to surf.

This isn’t Soviet Russia. This is America we’re talking about. For God’s sake, this is New York City.

In case you were wondering, my spirit animal is a duck billed platypus.

Father: Why did you not become mine God!? God: Because you did not believe in me.

When you have bacon in your mouth, it doesn't matter who's president.

I'm more concerned about members of Congress being drug-free than I am about members of the Yankees or Giants

I wanted to come back to the guitar after three albums and almost 10 years. I started to miss this instrument and I wanted to come back to the guitar.

To vanish in the chinks that Time has made.

Et tu Brute! (You too, Brutus!)