If you want to explore a political idea in the highest possible way, you embody it in the personal, because that's something that no one can deny.

I tend to foster drama via bleakness. If I want the reader to feel sympathy for a character, I cleave the character in half, on his birthday. And then it starts raining. And he's made of sugar.

What I regret most in my life are failures of kindness.

What I regret most in my life are failures of kindness. Those moments when another human being was there, in front of me, suffering, and I responded . . . sensibly. Reservedly. Mildly.

Do those things that incline you toward the big questions, and avoid the things that would reduce you and make you trivial.

Developing our sympathetic compassion is not only possible but the only reason for us to be here on earth.

According to me, your life is going to be a gradual process of becoming kinder and more loving. Hurry up. Speed it along. Start right now.

It's a big world, and I really like it.

Character is that sum total of moments we can't explain.

The generalizing writer is like the passionate drunk, stumbling into your house mumbling: I know I'm not being clear, exactly, but don't you kind of feel what I'm feeling?

Kindness, it turns out, is hard - it starts out all rainbows and puppy dogs, and expands to include . . . well, EVERYTHING.

Llamas can drive... they just don't know it yet...

The biggest regret? This may be one of those years I have no regrets.

The thought is merely a sign, as the word is merely a sign for the thought.

Hope, true hope, has proved as important as any medication I might prescribe or any procedure I might perform.

Religion is only the illusory sun which revolves round man as long as he does not revolve round himself.

My work is purely autobiographical... It is about myself and my surroundings.

Like Rick in Casablanca: "We'll always have Paris." When what we'll always have is, like, Brooklyn and arguments about [Lev] Trotsky.

Truth is independent of facts always.

To some people a tree is something so incredibly beautiful that it brings tears to the eyes. To others it is just a green thing that stands in the way.