I don’t want to fade away, I want to flame away - I want my death to be an attraction, a spectacle, a mystery. A work of art.

I was a stepchild in two different families. The hardest thing about being a stepchild is you know that in some way everything would be easier if you didnt exist.

If I had a view like this to look down on every day, I would have the energy and inspiration to conquer the world. The trouble is, when you most need such a view, no one gives it to you.

Read at the level at which you want to write. Reading is the nourishment that feeds the kind of writing you want to do.

Goon Squad' took about three years to write and that's the short end. My second novel, 'Look at Me,' took six years.

Because you can't write habitually and well all the time, you have to be willing to write badly. That's how you get the regularity that enables you to be present for the good stuff.

Reading is the nourishment that lets you do interesting work.

I'm always happy," Sasha said. "Sometimes I just forget.

The answers were maddeningly absent—it was like trying to remember a song that you knew made you feel a certain way, without a title, artist, or even a few bars to bring it back.

Vinegar: that's what fear smells like.

I think ethical ambivalence is a kind of innoculation, a way of excusing yourself in advance for something you actually want to do. No offense.

How wide, how long, how deep is the love that Saviour extends to all humanity!

Evil is nothing more than that, which was once divine, and has fallen into shit." Indrid Night - Through A Glass Darkly.

Figure out what past efforts amounted to nothing and label them your "not to do" list. Post the list where you'll see it.

I didn't see my character, Core, as a cannibal but as somebody who is extremely passionate and who doesn't have any conscience. She takes her passion to its complete extreme.

Better to have your enemies inside your tent pissing out, then to have them outside your tent pissing in.

Directing is like putting together a collage.

Regulation is strangling businesses of all sizes in California, and we've got to streamline regulation so it's easy, not hard. to do business.

Take inventory of yourself, see if any remnants of fear are standing in your way. Then you may grow... because nothing, absolutely nothing, can stand in your way.

If you've never woken up from a car accident to discover that your wife is dead and you're an animated, rotting corpse, then you probably wouldn't understand.

I don't look like I've been on a week long crack binge with Amy Winehouse.