The only hope we have are our bodies. We're all trapped in them and we all hate them, and it's this reason why we're comic and not tragic.

I just realized that I never look at a painting and ask, 'Is this painting fictional or non-fictional?' It’s just a painting.

Writing should be like skirts. Long enough to cover what it needs to cover and short enough to maintain interest.

Samuel Clemens isn't Mark Twain. Mark Twain is Mark Twain. He doesn't become the thing until he creates himself.

I have no interest in being a trained ballerina. People should dance how they want to dance. I want to be the funky chicken.

We like something because someone else liked it.

It's like that where these little anecdotes come through, and I guess that's what I like about books like that [He Stopped Loving Her Today]. Fiction now is so experiential.

The things that I have loved have always been those extremes where there has been some kind of apocalypse in the person's life, and they come out unscathed or scathed.

So much of our culture is bought and manufactured - not to say great art can't come out of that. Some art is really amazing that is manufactured and sold, like action movies and stuff.

I guess the things I have always loved are from people who were just being themselves. They were doing these things because they couldn't do it any other way. It was for them.

I think maybe it's my personality. People don't like my face.

The body fades. A leader who would last relies on more.

It was too lonely to be heaven, and there wouldn't be stars in hell.

Writing is a combination of intangible creative fantasy and appallingly hard work.

New York is a different country. Maybe it ought to have a separate government. Everybody thinks differently, they just don't know what the hell the rest of the United States is.

Time spent arguing with the faithful is, oddly enough, almost never wasted.

If you don't have an idea, you can defer to someone else. It's like having a baby with someone - it's not a clone of you, but it's partly you.

Two or three things I know for sure, and one of them is that if we are not beautiful to each other, we cannot know beauty in any form.

I'm not jealous, and I'm not possessive, and I'm not controlling.

The soul does not grow by addition but by subtraction.

The success of the dinner depends as much upon the company as the cook. Discordant elements - people invited alphabetically, or to pay off debts - are fatal.