As for how I feel about any success I've had, I just feel extremely lucky. Writing is a tough racket, and there are a lot of writers out there better than me who can't seem to catch a break.

Some people were born just so they could be buried.

If a person does this for just a couple of years and discovers that it just isn't for him, that's okay. At least he can move on knowing that he gave it his best shot.

Look, girls don't care how many push-ups you can do. They just want to get high and wear flowers in their hair. Maybe steal a car.

The Oxys filled holes in me I hadn't realized were empty. It was, at least for those first few months, a wonderful way to be disabled. I felt blessed.

I'm beginning to believe that anything I do to extend my life is just going to be outweighed by the agony of living it.

Though there are still many good people out there in the world, it seems that they're vastly outnumbered by the stupid, selfish, violent ones.

I spent thirty-two years in a paper mill in southern Ohio, and before that I worked in a meatpacking plant and a shoe factory.

A lot of people get the wrong impression, think there's something romantic or tragic about hitting bottom.

When I turned fifty, I decided to quit the mill and go to graduate school.

I sort of like writing about weird characters, I guess.

Of what use is a philosopher who doesn't hurt anybody's feelings?

I feel like I'm too busy writing history to read it.

With any advent in technology, any technological innovation, there is the good and the bad.

A public library is the most democratic thing in the world. What can be found there has undone dictators and tyrants.

There is no longer a Christian mind.

Nobody heard anything ahead of time.

We have a prime minister, I'm the foreign minister, I'm trying to get on with the job of doing Australia's foreign policy.

I don't know if you've ever fallen asleep whilst eating a plate of cauliflower, and then woken up, and thought you were in the clouds.

In the silence of listening, you can know yourself in everyone, the unseen singing softly to itself and to you.

The most affluent man is he that confronts all the shows he sees by equivalents out of the stronger wealth of himself.