Depression presents itself as a realism regarding the rottenness of the world in general and the rottenness of your life in particular.

I guess my life hasn’t always been happy, or easy, or exactly what I want. At a certain point, I just have to try not to think too much about certain things, or else they’ll break my heart.

Fiction is a solution, the best solution, to the problem of existential solitude.

It's doubtful that anyone with an internet connection at his workplace is writing good fiction.

Integrity's a neutral value. Hyenas have integrity, too. They're pure hyena.

Nice people don't necessarily fall in love with nice people.

The personality susceptible to the dream of limitless freedom is a personality also prone, should the dream ever sour, to misanthropy and rage.

The Mekons were kind of like the background music of my life.

Reading enables me to maintain a sense of something substantive– my ethical integrity, my intellectual integrity.

Fiction is a particularly effective way for strangers to connect across time and distance

If you want to have friends, you have to remember that nobody's perfect.

Invest your time and buy greatness with it.

I just felt my good fortune, and I also trust my love for the book, my love for the material, and my reverence for Stephen King.

The flood subsides, and the body, like a worn sea-shell emerges strange and lovely.

The natural impulses of every thoroughbred include his sense of honor; his love of fair play and courage; his dislike of pretense and of cheapness.

Some people think they are worth a lot of money just because they have it.

Pakistan should be a moderate Islamic state. That it should be a prosperous country is in India's interests, and it is in the world's interests.

Lord, I want to be up in my heart.

The secret to riches is the same as the secret to comedy - timing.

The future woman must have a life work and economic independence. She must have the right of motherhood at her own discretion.

It is the abiding concern of thinking people to preserve what keeps men human-to save our contact with nature of which we are a part.