There are lots of unlikable characters in literature. It doesn't mean they're not fascinating.

Pepsi brings your ancestors back from the dead.

Boring people don't know they're boring. That's the problem with boring people.

I'm trying always to leave out what I think is extraneous. And to find what I think is the most wonderful language to make a beautiful sentence.

I think it's true that unless human beings experience something, they simply don't understand what people are going through.

I'm the author of my own misery.

I don't think anybody says to Coetzee or Dostoyevsky or Kafka, "Your characters aren't likeable." It's not about your character winning a popularity contest. That's not the writer's job.

It's not the writer who determines how good she is anyway. Writers don't determine that. It's readers who determine that.

Do the obvious, you won't forget it. Do the obvious, you won't regret it. Obvious, obvious, obvious.

Nonfiction gives you subjects. Writing fiction I can have more fun, but I have to invent my subject.

Without curiosity a writer is dead.

It often seems to me that art conceals the artist far more completely than it ever reveals him.

You see, some things I can teach you. Some you learn from books. But they are things that, well, you just have to see and feel. p.147

The Way of Liberation is not a belief system; it is something to be put into practice.

You cannot buy loyalty; you cannot buy the devotion of hearts, minds, and souls. You have to earn these things.

Joe Mantello is the uber director. I wrote him a card tonight saying basically, 'Will you adopt me?'

In London, love and scandal are considered the best sweeteners of tea.

Don't get involved with anyone who doesn't respect his mother.

The law of life is to leave behind the ground one is standing on and then step forward.

You get below the Mason-Dixon line and you have some of the best music, culture, the two races, the literature, and it's so rich.

After some minor pieces of theoretical study that I worked on, a student in my statistical mechanics class brought to my attention a problem in polyelectrolytes.