The things I keep going back to, rereading, maybe they say more about me as a reader than about the books. Love in the Time of Cholera, Pale Fire.

The First Amendment has the same role in my life as a citizen and a writer as the sun has in our ecosystem.

Forget about what you are escaping from. Reserve your anxiety for what you are escaping to.

Undressing her was an act of recklessness, a kind of vandalism, like releasing a zoo full of animals, or blowing up a dam.

Take care-there is no force more powerful than that of an unbridled imagination.

A delicate, inexorable lattice of inferences began to assemble themselves, like a crystal, in the old man's mind, shivering, catching the light in glints and surmises.

Man makes plans . . . and God laughs.

My Saturday Night. My Saturday night is like a microwave burrito. Very tough to ruin something that starts out so bad to begin with.

Anything good that I have written has, at some point during its composition, left me feeling uneasy and afraid. It has seemed, for a moment at least, to put me at risk.

It's always been hard for me to tell the difference between denial and what used to be known as hope.

I said, “I need to hear something that’s going to save my life.” Re: Selecting songs from a jukebox.

Lies don't end relationships the truth does.

Having a kid is like an industrial revolution of the emotions. Suddenly you can mass produce worry, and guilt.

Humor is an attitude. It's a way of looking at life and of telling others how you feel about what's happening around you.

I doubted myself for a long time... I'm comfortable not using my vision. I weave around my problems.

But I was also doing odd jobs around Portland, like spreading gravel and transplanting bamboo trees.

I started out doing covers.

If you're holding out for universal popularity, I'm afraid you will be in this cabin for a very long time.

The real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light.

I've changed since I've known you. Not because you made me into someone else - but because you showed me a path I'd never paid attention to, and I chose to follow it.

Most wars are not won in a single battle.