On a good day I write, all day.

Perhaps everyone has a story that could break your heart.

By the time I'm nine I know the world is a dangerous place. I've heard whispers about razorblades in apples, about Charlie Manson and his family. But no one is offering any clear information.

There are many ways to drown, only the most obvious wave their arms as they're going under.

Certain stories we carry with us, events in our life, they define who we are. It's not a matter of getting over anything; we have to make the best of it.

Writers, especially poets, are particularly prone to madness.

I can weep pretty easily. I can get tears in my eyes from a beautiful work of art.

If you're going to write about someone's life, you don't just use them for wallpaper. You have to honor and respect that life.

Alcohol is the river we sit on the banks of, contemplating. Sometimes we watch ourselves float past, sometimes we watch ourselves sink.

Everything we do, I'd imagine, influences everything we will do.

Who doesn't want to just disappear, at some point in the day, in a year, to just step off the map and float?

Don't be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people's thinking.

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?

Like a white knight in a station wagon, he drove out of her life.

Donald Trump would be a better president every day of the week and twice on Sunday rather than Hillary Clinton.

John Kerry wants to be the hero in his own drama. He likes King Arthur and the Round Table. He likes the young swashbuckling Churchill, and he loved the early antics of Theodore Roosevelt.

I like to draw, produce paintings, do something with my fingers - but I am very normal, down-to-earth person.

You don't have to be dishonest to communicate the gospel.

The best kind of wine is that which is most pleasant to him who drinks it.

Our minds are like our stomaches; they are whetted by the change of their food, and variety supplies both with fresh appetite.

When female minds are embittered by age or solitude, their malignity is generally exerted in a rigorous and spiteful superintendence of domestic trifles.