In other words, fiction is payback for those who have wronged you.

A monster is a person who has stopped pretending.

It is failure that guides evolution; perfection provides no incentive for improvement, and nothing is perfect.

You are a New Yorker when what was there before is more real and solid than what is here now.

Memory is the most malicious cutter of all, preserving, recasting, panning in slow motion across the awful bits so that we retain every detail.

We never see other people anyway, only the monsters we make of them.

What isn't said is as important as what is said.

Sanctimony and self-regard are as American as smallpox blankets and supersize meals.

A society manufactures the heroes it requires.

Google "brooklyn writer" and you'll get, Did you mean: the future of literature as we know it?

Pain could be killed. Sadness could not, but the drugs did shut its mouth for a time.

When you have nothing but love, then you're the richest person of the world.

They can afford to smile because they all have teeth so dazzling if they dropped them in the snow they'd be lost forever.

Winners, I am convinced, imagine their dreams first. They want it with all their heart and expect it to come true. There is, I believe, no other way to live.

But I want people to understand that poker's not all glamorous, it's not all being on TV and making tons of money. It's a hard life. It's a lot of travel. It's a lot of weird hours.

In my lifetime, I may have put too much emphasis on winning, because here I am an old man and the only fun I've had is winning, and that's ridiculous.

No matter how tough the meat may be, it's going to be tender if you slice it thin enough.

Please don't wake me, no, don't shake me, leave me where I am, I'm only sleeping.

We're supposed to be civilized. We're supposed to go to work every day. We're supposed to be nice to our friends and send Christmas cards to our parents.

I want to be what I've always wanted to be: dominant.

Be true to yourself. If you follow that principle, a lot of decisions are actually pretty easy.