Art never comes from happiness.

The truth is, immigrants tend to be more American than people born here.

If you love something set it free, but don’t be surprised if it comes back with herpes.

No matter how much you love someone, you still want to have you own way.

The amazing miracle of death, when one second you’re walking and talking, and the next second you’re an object.

No, it’s not fair, but what makes earth feel like Hell is our expectation that it should feel like Heaven. Earth is earth. Dead is dead. You’ll find out for yourself soon enough. It won’t...

Without pain, without sacrifice we would have nothing. Like the first monkey shot into space.

The club is too loud to talk, so after a couple of drinks, everyone feels like the centre of attention but completely cut off from participating with anyone else. You’re the corpse in an English...

Rachel hadn’t invented the dangers of toxoplasmosis; she’d gone online and built an airtight case. This wasn’t crazy talk. Neurobiologists had linked T. gondii to suicide and the onset of schizophrenia. All caused by exposure...

You have a choice. Live or die. Every breath is a choice. Every minute is a choice. Every time you don’t throw yourself down the stairs, that’s a choice. Every time you don’t crash your...

Nothing shows you the straight line from here to death like a list.

I would say any behavior that is not the status quo is interpreted as insanity, when, in fact, it might actually be enlightenment. Insanity is sorta in the eye of the beholder.

Think about George Orwell’s three-minute hate from the novel ‘1984’ and how that left everyone sort of exhausted and able to live their boring humdrum lives. If our lives are going to continue being unfulfilled...

Every time I write something, I think, this is the most offensive thing I will ever write. But no. I always surprise myself.

‘At the Gates of the Animal Kingdom’ by Amy Hempel showed me the lean quality of prose.

Personal identity seems like it’s just such an American archetype, from Holly Golightly re-inventing herself in ‘Breakfast At Tiffany’s’ to Jay Gatsby in ‘The Great Gatsby.’ It seems like the sort of archetypal American issue....

My personal theory is that younger audiences disdain books – not because those readers are dumber than past readers, but because today’s reader is smarter.

When I first used to tour, guys would come up and say, ‘Where’s the fight club in my area?’ and I would say, ‘There isn’t one.’ And they’d say, ‘No, no, you can tell me,...

Everything is still falling apart.

Everybody looks a little crazy if you’re looking close enough and if you can’t look that close, then you don’t really love them.

Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken!

It’s exhausting, the energy it takes to unknow a truth.

Nobody wants to worship you if you have the same problems, the same bad breath and messy hair and hangnails, as a regular person. You have to be everything regular people aren’t. Where they fail,...

The voice says, maybe you don’t go to hell for the things you do. Maybe you go to hell for the things you don’t do. The things you don’t finish.

Even if you tell yourself “Today I’m going to drink coffee the wrong way … from a dirty boot.” Even that would be right, because you chose to drink coffee from that boot.Because you can...

Here in the bathroom with me are razor blades. Here is iodine to drink. Here are sleeping pills to swallow. You have a choice. Live or die. Every breath is a choice. Every minute is...

When we don’t know who to hate, we hate ourselves.

Did perpetual happiness in the Garden of Eden maybe get so boring that eating the apple was justified?

He was the kind of boy any young girl should date while she’s still able to recover.

People used what they called a telephone because they hated being close together and they were scared of being alone.

You must realize that one day you will die. Until then you are worthless.

There will always be an underground.

People say I make up wild stories. But all I have to do is write down stuff that really happens.

What is the real purpose behind the Tooth Fairy, the Easter Bunny and Santa Claus? They seem like greater steps toward faith and imagination, each with a payoff. Like cognitive training exercises.

We don’t have friends, so we watch ‘Friends’ on TV.

The young men, they look to me for a story they can get nowhere else, a challenging risky story.

Cada uno es su hobby favorito. Uno siempre es experto en uno mismo.

Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don’t need.

It can only take a moment to waste the rest of your life.

I don’t want to die without any scars.

Why do I do anything?’ she says. ‘I’m educated enough to talk myself out of any plan. To deconstruct any fantasy. Explain away any goal. I’m so smart I can negate any dream.

No one wants to admit we’re addicted to music. That’s just not possible. No one’s addicted to music and television and radio. We just need more of it, more channels, a larger screen, more volume....

You gain power by pretending to be weak.

It’s creepy, but here we are, the Pilgrims, the crackpots of our time, trying to establish our own alternate reality. To build a world out of rocks and chaos.What it’s going to be, I don’t...

We can spend our lives letting the world tell us who we are. Sane or insane. Saints or sex addicts. Heroes or victims. Letting history tell us how good or bad we are. Letting our...

Hey, even the Mona Lisa is falling apart.

You can spend your whole life building a wall of facts between you and anything real.

My teacher Tom Spanbauer, the man who got me started writing in his workshop, used to say: ‘Writers write because they weren’t invited to a party.’ That always struck so true, and people always nod...

If nothing else, there’s comfort in recognising that no matter how much we fail and sin, death will limit our suffering.

My stories always have these twisted happy endings, and the boy always gets the girl.