[T]hat I could find company and consolation and hope in an object pulled almost at random from a bookshelf--felt akin to an instance of religious grace.

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.

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

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

A cynic can chill and dishearten with a single word.

The legacy I want to leave is a child-care system that says no kid is going to be left alone or left unsafe.

If people like you, they'll listen to you, but if they trust you, they'll do business with you.

My wife and I want to try swapping. We want to go to one of those key parties where you put your keys in a bowl. But we just want to upgrade our car.

The reader's impression is one of a dream - the only thing that's left upon waking is the memory of a melody at the end of a concert.

I was feeling single, seeing double, wound up in a whole lotta trouble.

It seems to me that God is a convenient invention of the human mind

It really kind of looks like now that John Kerry is on his way to the presidential nomination. The only thing that can sink John Kerry now is an Al Gore endorsement.

The most effective comeback to an insult is silence.

Wisdom sits with children round her knees.