When I look back over my novels what I find is that when I think I'm finished with a theme, I'm generally not. And usually themes will recur from novel to novel in odd, new guises.

At the risk of appearing disingenuous, I don't really think of myself as 'writing humor.' I'm simply reporting on the world I observe, which is frequently hilarious.

And there comes a time in your life when you realize that if you don't take the opportunity to be happy, you may never get another chance again.

People sometimes get in the habit of being loyal to a mistake.

You use simple brushstrokes in a screenplay for things over which you would take much greater pains in a novel.

Have you ever noticed that when people use the expression 'I have to say', what follows usually needn't be said?

What if all everybody needed in the world was to be sure of one friend? What if you were the one, and you refused to say those simple words?

My books are elegiac in the sense that they're odes to a nation that even I sometimes think may not exist anymore except in my memory and my imagination.

Worse, I have to admit to feeling the jealousy of one crab for another that has managed to climb out of the barrel.

Bookstores, like libraries, are the physical manifestation of the wide world's longest, most thrilling conversation.

I was the one who did come through that door. You were the one she was waiting for.

Keep Moving Forward

For me, the short story is not a character sketch, a mouse trap, an epiphany, a slice of suburban life. It is the flowering of a symbol center. It is a poem grafted onto sturdier stock.

Solitude helps you to convert your time into the clarity of purpose.

I'm more interested in the meaning of funerals and the mourning that people do. It's not a retail experience. It's an existential one.

Soup's on and I got a coupon. Chinese restaurant asking for the Grey Poupon. He said "No, duck sauce, soy sauce... And this ain't no Burger King, so you no get no toy, boss."

A good part of the fame of most celebrated men is due to the shortsightedness of their admirers

It is labor alone that is productive: it creates wealth and therewith lays the outward foundations for the inward flowering of man.

Living fearlessly is not the same as never being afraid. It's good to be afraid occasionally. Fear is a great teacher.

Culture stereotypes women to fit the myth by flattening the feminine into beauty-without-intelligence or intelligence-without-beauty; women are allowed a mind or a body but not both.

You always want to see the NFL try to protect the players.