You were always uncomfortable with the rhetoric of emotion, which is quite a different matter from discomfort with emotion itself.

A lot of people get so hung up on what they can't have that they don't think for a second about whether they really want it.

You can call it innocence, or you can call it gullibility, but Celia made the most common mistake of the good-hearted: she assumed that everyone else was just like her.

My own apathy is bone chilling.

In a country that doesn't discriminate between fame and infamy, the latter presents itself as plainly more achievable.

Funny how you dig yourself into a hole by the teaspoon.

It's far less important to me to be liked these days than to be understood.

But what's so great about being a perfectionist?... You do all this work, and then the stuff you've made just pisses you off.

Giving anyone anything takes courage, since so many presents backfire. A gift conspicuously at odds with your tastes serves only to betray that the benefactor has no earthly clue who you are.

Reading time is precious. Don't waste it. Reading bad books, or books that are wrong for a certain time in your life, can dangerously turn you off the activity altogether.

The Web, the great time-killer that had replaced conspicuously passive television with its seductive illusion of productivity.

I'm the living embodiment of 'it could be worse'.

It may be small comfort, but I believe Rafe doesn't want to kill you." A light laugh escaped her lips. "Actually, that is a substantial comfort.

A culture finds the gods it needs.

Revolutions are not about trifles but spring from trifles.

I despise the cowardly clinging to life, purely for the sake of life, that seems so deeply ingrained in the American temperament.

Small business in America is booming. The job creator in America, small business, is absolutely moving ahead.

There is no uncreated being except God. God has no opposite.

You piss me off you Salmon... You're too expensive in restaurants.

As writers, we don't just need to write about poverty or war or the immigrant experience.

I guess when you go to business school you never turn business off.