It's doubtful that anyone with an internet connection at his workplace is writing good fiction.

I guess my life hasn’t always been happy, or easy, or exactly what I want. At a certain point, I just have to try not to think too much about certain things, or else they’ll break my heart.

Fiction is a solution, the best solution, to the problem of existential solitude.

Integrity's a neutral value. Hyenas have integrity, too. They're pure hyena.

Nice people don't necessarily fall in love with nice people.

The personality susceptible to the dream of limitless freedom is a personality also prone, should the dream ever sour, to misanthropy and rage.

The Mekons were kind of like the background music of my life.

Depression presents itself as a realism regarding the rottenness of the world in general and the rottenness of your life in particular.

Reading enables me to maintain a sense of something substantive– my ethical integrity, my intellectual integrity.

Fiction is a particularly effective way for strangers to connect across time and distance

If you want to have friends, you have to remember that nobody's perfect.

The sin which is unpardonable is knowingly and wilfully to reject truth, to fear knowledge lest that knowledge pander not to thy prejudices.

Anyone who commits a xenophobic crime has to be brought to justice.

I've watched 'Being There' over 50 times, and every time I watch it, I love every frame. I just wish I had directed it myself.

If you're playing baseball and thinking about managing, you're crazy. You'd be better off thinking about being an owner.

I got into stand-up to get on a sitcom.

I ought to tell you that I'm probably your cousin.

Mistakes aren't fatal; they are merely the portals of discovery.

The suffering of our people is greater than our differences. We are not yet free at last, so there is work to be done.

A person may be totally unimaginative and have the social vision of a mole, and we still call him a decent man.

I have found the best way to avoid ending your life as a bitter wreck is to start out as one.