Dad's Theory of Arrogance--that everyone always assumes they're the Principal Character of Desire and/or Loathing in everybody else's Broadway Play.

I hate how the people who really get you are the ones you can never hold on to for very long. And the ones who don’t understand you at all stick around.

People had an illogical, self-serving rationale when it came to interpreting the behavior of others.

Not returning phone calls is the severest form of torture in the civilized world.

Always live your life with your biography in mind.

Sovereign. Deadly. Perfect.

It's a common feeling for people to feel intermittent antipathy toward individuals they're familiar with.

Within every elaborate lie, a kernel of truth.

He said you couldn't pretend the terrible things in life didn't happen. You can't clean it up. You keep all the refuse and the scars. It's how you learn. And try to make improvements.

Making love to Aurelia was like rummaging through a card catalog in a deserted library, searching for one very obscure, little-read entry on Hungarian poetry.

For every man there exists bait he cannot resist swallowing.

To be heroic does not have to mean possessing the ability to stand against the evils of the world, either well or successfully, but just that one is willing to stand.

The tongue ever turns to the aching tooth.

There has never been an age that did not applaud the past and lament the present.

The bed is now as public as the dinner table and governed by the same rules of formal confrontation.

There's something nice and safe about having money.

Instinct taught me 20 years ago to pace a song or a concert performance. That translates into pacing a story, pleasing a reading audience.

You can’t really change the heart without telling a story.

When I am angry I can write, pray, and preach well, for then my whole temperament is quickened, my understanding sharpened, and all mundane vexations and temptations depart.

Hello...911? I'd like to report a robbery, looks like Trish and Tomko stole the show!

Genius is a promontory jutting out into the infinite.