Talking about New York is a way of talking about the world.

A monster is a person who has stopped pretending.

It is failure that guides evolution; perfection provides no incentive for improvement, and nothing is perfect.

You are a New Yorker when what was there before is more real and solid than what is here now.

Memory is the most malicious cutter of all, preserving, recasting, panning in slow motion across the awful bits so that we retain every detail.

In other words, fiction is payback for those who have wronged you.

We never see other people anyway, only the monsters we make of them.

What isn't said is as important as what is said.

Sanctimony and self-regard are as American as smallpox blankets and supersize meals.

A society manufactures the heroes it requires.

Google "brooklyn writer" and you'll get, Did you mean: the future of literature as we know it?

That’s the magic of revisions – every cut is necessary, and every cut hurts, but something new always grows.

But in all His dealings with His creatures God has maintained the principles of righteousness by revealing sin in its true character-by demonstrating that its sure result is misery and death.

For as long as I am your mother and you are my only child, i will worry and hope and pray for you. Do not ask the impossible.

I will follow anyone...And remind everyone...Of enslaved Yazidi women...Raped...And forced...To donate blood to ISIS men...

It's really important in our society to tell stories, and I feel grateful and honoured that I get to do that in this day and age.

Any girl can look glamorous... just stand there and look stupid.

This is one of my big things of creative pursuits. You have your idea you want to do, but then you got to figure out what does this thing want to be? You got to let it lead you a little.

Anybody who has curly hair knows you don't want it to be brushed out because it becomes a never-ending tangle.

I became a councillor back in 1971, so if by this stage in politics I'm making lots of big mistakes, then I shouldn't be here.

To live is to choose.