if you want to make a human being into a monster, deny them, at the cultural level, any reflection of themselves.

But if these years have taught me anything it is this: you can never run away. Not ever. The only way out is in.

If you didn't grow up like I did then you don't know, and if you don't know it's probably better you don't judge.

In my view, a writer is a writer because even when there is no hope, even when nothing you do shows any sign of promise, you keep writing anyway.

In order to write the book you want to write, in the end you have to become the person you need to become to write that book.

You can't regret the life you didn't lead.

She was the kind of girlfriend God gives you young, so you'll know loss the rest of your life.

Success, after all, loves a witness, but failure can't exist without one.

She would be a new person, she vowed. They said no matter how far a mule travels it can never come back a horse, but she would show them all.

Our relationship wasn't the sun, the moon, the stars, but it wasn't bullshit, either.

Then you look at her and smile a smile your dissembling face will remember until the day you die. Baby, you say, baby, this is part of my novel. This is how you lose her.

There are only two kinds of people in this world, Mr. Sallinger: people who rise above that suffering and people who let it define them." (The Ables)

If you want to be loved, do what others want. If you want to live, do what you want. The choice is yours.

You had to stand in line to hate him.

Ultimately, the human being is in the mercy of nature.

We have rapidly increasing technology, which is making life very good for people who are good at using words, and not so good for people who are not good at using words.

The objection to Puritans is not that they try to make us think as they do, but that they try to make us do as they think.

All sorts of yayness floods my brain. Love is such a drug.

You cannot give up - you have to be persistent and keep pushing, and press on.

Hard work is a muscle that you develop, as is taking risks.

I'm not just an actor born in L.A. I was born in the Griffith Park Hospital. You can't get any more clichéd than that.