Nothing on Earth is so beautiful as the final haul on Halloween night.

All readers come to fiction as willing accomplices to your lies. Such is the basic goodwill contract made the moment we pick up a work of fiction.

We need books...because we are all, in the private kingdoms of our hearts, desperate for the company of a wise, true friend.

Misery loves another idiot with a jukebox where his soul should be.

At the end of night, before you close your eyes, be content with what you've done and be proud of who you are.

I have a hard time defending the production of candy, given that it is basically crack for children and makes them dependent in unwholesome ways.

The answer is that we don't choose our freaks, they choose us.

At about the age of ten, during a late summer visit to Sears to buy school clothes, I became aware of the concept of candy by the pound.

The single biggest reason I got my stories taken in various literary magazines - and I want to stress this - is because I refused to give up. Period.

If you want to fight a cult, you've got to form a cult.

To look at the work of your peers, and learn how to explain with kindness and precision, the nature of their mistakes is, in fact, how you learn to diagnose your own work.

Words that should cross your lips with ease: thank you, love you, sorry, please.

We belong to a nation, whose fate is to shoot at the enemy with diamonds.

We fail even if we do our best, because our best is someone else’s good.

I love sporting events and popcorn and pizza and being outside, like at a baseball or football game. I love amusement parks, going to ride roller coasters.

I found it stimulating to study the sciences. It was a side of understanding the universe that I hadn't been exposed to.

Man forms himself in his own interior, and nowhere else.

[Boris]Johnson, [Nigel] Farage, they are retro-nationalists, not patriots. Patriots don't abandon ship when the going gets tough. They stay on board.

I believe rock can do anything, it's the ultimate vehicle for everything

Most men are unwilling to be taught.

My problem is desserts. I am obsessed with desserts.