When one writer tries to silence another, he silences every writer-and in the end he also silences himself.

Childhood smells of perfume and brownies.

I think it's very funny that someone would exaggerate to make himself look worse.

In a memoir, I think, the contract implies a certain degree of truth. I think you have to be as true to your memory and your experience as you possibly can.

Having reached a point in which I was so bitter and exhausted from being a quote unquote public figure, I wanted to return to a more childlike relationship to writing.

It is so common to write autobiographical fiction in which your own experience is thinly disguised.

Novels are forged in passion, demand fidelity and commitment, often drive you to boredom or rage, sleep with you at night.

They were good parents. The worst thing they ever did to us was die.

Life is a blank canvas, and you need to throw all the paint on it you can.

It is ironic that we are particular about flushing out all the dirt through the Drain, but we continue to retain a lot of it in our Brain.

There's too much coldness in the world, " I told her. "If people would only talk things out together it would help.

Rectory always sounded to me like a place you would find a proctologist.

How can you govern a country with two hundred and forty-six varieties of cheese?

I irritate the wife because of my private dancing.

The Doctrine of Evolution states the fact that the present is the child of the past and the parent of the future.

What happens with you when you begin to feel uneasy, unsettled, queasy? Notice the panic, notice when you instantly grab for something. (51)

Communities need to feel that they can accommodate people. Rather than feeling that it's not possible to integrate and that the stress and strain on housing and public services is too great.

Philosophy should be an energy; it should find its aim and its effect in the amelioration of mankind.