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.

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.

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.

To love makes one solitary.

I've been to Canada, and I've always gotten the impression that I could take the country over in about two days.

In the meantime, there is not an hour to lose. I am about to visit the public library.

You can get what you want. It depends on the strength of your desire.

There is a paradox in pride: it makes some men ridiculous but prevents others from becoming so.

We give advice, but we cannot give the wisdom to profit by it.

Not even thinking about anything. My mind is a blank. We just want to enjoy the moment.

You have to jump into the pool before you know whether there's water in it.

You never know which gig is going to be your last.

The world is a mirror of infinite beauty, yet no man sees it. It is a Temple of Majesty, yet no man regards it. It is a region of Light and Peace, did not men disquiet it. It is the Paradise of God.