There are some writers who also enjoy being authors, and are good at it as well. There is nothing performative about writing, but there is about being a writer.

In the 1950s that tug-of-war between the expectations of behaving normally and the limitlessness of thinking freely produces some very strange characters.

If you start asking how do we make life meaningful and life never ends, then you get into sort of these terrible sort of metaphysical quandaries and it gets really, really bleak looking.

He experienced the singular pleasure of watching people he loved fall in love with other people he loved.

What he knew, he knew from books, and books lied, they made things prettier.

. . . breathing slowly and rubbing his palm against his chest as if to soothe his heart.

There was something scary and anxiety-inducing about being in a space where nothing seemed to be forbidden to him, where everything was offered to him and nothing was asked in return

This isn't fair, he would think in those moments. This isn't friendship. It's something, but it's not friendship. He felt he had been hustled into a game of complicity, one he never intended to play.

And so I try to be kind to everything I see, and in everything I see, I see him.

He will be someone who is defined, first and always, by what he is missing.

My phone rang, and although it wasn't a sinister time of night, and although nothing had happened that I would later see as foreshadowing, I knew, I knew.

To fail, try to please your critics. To please your critics, try to fail.

Never neglect the charms of narrative for the human heart.

In my opinion the man looks at the relationship in a more bitter fashion and the woman still holds great hopes.

There are certain times you rattle the press's cages, and other times you don't, and you have to be discerning about it.

I would admit Im an introvert. I dont know why introverts have to apologize.

Only he deserves power who every day justifies it.

Leadership comes with consistency.

I learn my songs by ear.

A German joke is no laughing matter.

Have to and get to?both are choices. One is negative and one is positive. Choose the right one and it can change your life.