We may freak out globally, but we suffer locally.

I guess my life hasn’t always been happy, or easy, or exactly what I want. At a certain point, I just have to try not to think too much about certain things, or else they’ll break my heart.

Fiction is a solution, the best solution, to the problem of existential solitude.

It's doubtful that anyone with an internet connection at his workplace is writing good fiction.

Integrity's a neutral value. Hyenas have integrity, too. They're pure hyena.

Nice people don't necessarily fall in love with nice people.

The personality susceptible to the dream of limitless freedom is a personality also prone, should the dream ever sour, to misanthropy and rage.

The Mekons were kind of like the background music of my life.

Depression presents itself as a realism regarding the rottenness of the world in general and the rottenness of your life in particular.

Reading enables me to maintain a sense of something substantive– my ethical integrity, my intellectual integrity.

Fiction is a particularly effective way for strangers to connect across time and distance

True hope has no room for delusion.

Meditation is… a state that can best be described as deep dreamless sleep while awake.

Computers can bully us. A slow and unreliable system will bring even the toughest soul to their knees as they find themselves completely defenseless against the erratic whims of their rogue machine.

I have had an amazing career for a man who hits things for a living.

By being persistent, you're demonstrating faith. Persistence is simply another word for faith. If you didn't have faith, you'd never persist.

Sentimentality - that's what we call the sentiment we don't share.

Death Makes Angels of us all.

The true genius of a great manager is his or her ability to individualize. A great manager is one who understands how to trip each person's trigger.

They that pray in the family do well; they that pray and read the Scriptures do better; but they that pray, and read, and sing do best of all.

You have to believe that you are the one who creates your success, that you are the one who creates your mediocrity, and that you are the one creating your struggle around money and success.