You need an entire drama to construct your life around to avoid living it.

A waft of sweet hash drifted by, and I wanted to float after it like Wimpy levitating at the scent of a hamburger.

I need - and occasionally love - to write for the same reasons I always did: hard as writing is, it's generally easier than life.

All of us, at some point in life, choose our cliché.

It's not like I was an alkie or anything. Alcohol is for cleaning needles

I don't really know how to do much else besides write.

I kept getting high to kill my shame at the fact that I kept getting high.

To me, God is like this happy bus driver.

In my family, misery didn't just love company, it wanted hostages.

I've always wanted to be a guy with a rec room.

This is what I think: If you had the nerve to live what you lived, you should have the nerve to write it.

People live inside the stories they tell themselves. Others see about you the things that you believe.

Quickness is the essence of the war.

Integrity is doing the right thing, even when no one is watching.

I love the idea of a movie hero in a thriller who is able to get ahead by just his brilliance, and not with a gun or by being an action hero.

Liberals believe that they can't get a fair shake from the media anymore.

Live like there's no tomorrow. Love like you're on borrowed time. Always remember, It's good to be alive.

When you write a two thousand page history of the Second World War, the deportations and the concentration camps will take up five pages, and the gas chambers perhaps 20 lines.

Truth to me is infinitely dearer than the 'mahatmaship' which is purely a burden.

Where is this love? I can't see it, I can't touch it. I can't feel it. I can hear it. I can hear some words, but I can't do anything with your easy words

The attitude of unhappiness is not only painful, it is mean and ugly.