Feminism now seems to be defined as success is defined: as being as good at capitalism as men are. I feel very estranged from it.

I understand maybe some people are more impressionable than my hard, cynical self, but maybe they need to figure out how to be less of that.

I was twenty-one when I was hired by Planned Parenthood. It was my first work experience outside of either temping or working for my father at his store.

Once you leave, you're no longer of that country, but you are never actually of the country that you go to, and if you go back, you're not anywhere. You never belong to anything.

American culture never necessarily made sense to me, but they should warn you: leaving comes with a huge sense of alienation that never goes away.

Talk to people who know more than you. I feel like we're in this stupid sea of opinion, like "My opinion is valid because it's mine and I have it."

You don't have to go to New York and you don't have to go to LA or London. Go somewhere cheap. Go somewhere with free art museums and then just go to art museums.

Go to a place and just send out emails. That's my entire life. I go to countries and I ask, "Who would I know who lives here?" Not even do I know, but who exists and is on the planet.

There's this resistance to actually talking to people who are smarter than you about things and I don't know why that is.

I knew my motivations for going to each place and what I was looking for. If I don't do that then I generally don't write about my travels.

I like European and South American literature, but mostly I read nonfiction.

But words are water in Amsterdam, they flood your ears and set the rot, and the church's east corner is crowded.

For even the best err in words when they are meant to mean most delicate and almost inexpressible things.

If you have children, you don't want to have drugs and drinks in the house. It's just not good.

The ideal state is meekness, or humility, or the semi-invalid state of the old. Year after year I am becoming nobler and nobler. If I can live to be decrepit enough, I shall be a saint.

[Alessandro Michele] is finally made clothing for men that is as fun to wear as the clothes that women get to wear. That's not often the case. There's a sense of joy and celebration in it.

The artificial heart is very effective as a bridge to transplant, but the number of people that can be saved with human hearts is limited. A perfect artificial heart could save many more patients.

Eisenhower is my choice as the American of the 20th Century. Of all the men I've studied and written about, he is the brightest and the best.

If you have wind it becomes more difficult than you think.