I don't really distinguish between sympathy and honesty when I'm writing. The two go together - I'm interested in inhabiting my characters, seeing the world through their eyes.

Maybe that's what we look for in the people we love, the spark of unhappiness we think we know how to extinguish.

When things don't go well, it helps to think of yourself as a genius and the rest of the world as a bunch of idiots.

Every minute we were together, I felt like I was wandering in the dark through a strange house, groping for a light switch. And then, whenever I found one and turned it on, the bulb was dead.

Sooner or later we all lose our loved ones. We all have to suffer, every last one of us.

I read 'The Great Gatsby' in high school and was hypnotized by the beauty of the sentences and moved by the story about the irrevocability of lost love.

Once you'd broken through that invisible barrier that separates one person from another, you were connected forever, whether you liked it or not.

It just took some people a little longer than others to realize how few words they needed to get by, how much of life they could negotiate in silence.

Apparently even the most awful tragedies, and the people they'd ruined, got a little stale after a while.

He made me think of all the books I hadn't read, and all the ones I'd read but hadn't fully understood.

My novels are certainly more exciting than my own life.

Not to take one's own suffering seriously, to make light of it or even to laugh at it, is considered good manners in our culture.

What I think is that there is no perspective in grief, or in love. How can there be, when one person becomes the center of the universe - either because he has been lost or because he has been found?

When speaking of love, and suffering a broken heart, the student said, 'You can't drown if you vow to never swim again.' To which the master replied, 'You will also never choke if you don't eat.'

In our nation there are two classes of nobility: the law-abiding workers and the law-abiding employers who sustain each other.

I just feel "One More Try" is better lyrically. "Careless Whisper" was written when I was 17 years old, and I had not really experienced anything that strong in my life, so it was a bit precocious.

I get nervous the more time I have to think about something so I deliberately don't give myself too much time between jobs. I take a big break and then I start working again usually.

I was born in the U.S. Why should anyone who has an unfavorable view of the American government renounce his or her citizenship? Why don't its supporters relinquish their citizenship first?

As you make your way along life's tumultuous highways, it's important to note that you should always carry a map, have plenty of fuel in the tank, and take frequent rest stops.

The limits to innovation have nothing to do with creativity, and nothing to do with technology. They have everything to do with management capability.

Grunt, foam at the mouth, and otherwise get psychic.