There is much in our culture to affront the eye of the fervent terrorist postulant, things out there that do us no favors, to be sure. If, for example, it came to light that the...

I cannot escape the feeling that I was, at best, a cancer tourist, that my survival means I dabbled.

I was going to say that writing is about disclosure and acting is about obfuscation, but that’s such a little lie. Both of them are about obfuscation and masking oneself.

When people give you a writing assignment, they’re asking what you think. That’s the very opposite of being an actor. When you’re an actor, no one wants to hear what you think.

But if one’s dreams having to come true was the only referendum on whether they were beautiful, or worth dreaming, well then, no one would wish for anything. And that would be so much sadder.

I don’t particularly consider myself an actor. I have no training. I love doing it, but I would never consider myself to be a colleague of an actual actor. That would be stepping way up...

A secondhand wardrobe hand clothes doesn’t make one an artist. Neither do a hair-trigger temper, melancholic nature, propensity for tears, hating your parents, or HIV. I hate to say it – none of these make...

I have no problem with animals, I just like people more.

Unless one is planning to go shopping – basically begging to be smothered by the ravening throngs of returners and bargain hunters; an embrace as constricting as that hugging machine designed by autistic author Temple...

It must be murder to be an aging beauty, a former Tadzio, to see your future as an ignored spectator rushing up to meet you like the hard pavement. What a small sip of gall...

Lying flat against the tile of the kitchen floor listening to someone else have sex is essentially my early twenties in a nutshell.

About the only thing that I have – or had, because it’s failing me lately – is my memory. I had a really good memory. I was always terribly protective of that fact.

Altruism is innate, but it’s not instinctual. Everybody’s wired for it, but a switch has to be flipped.

I will forever be grateful to my oncologist for opening the door and saying, ‘Damn it, the tumor’s 10 percent bigger,’ before he even said hello.

Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve. Well, of course not Adam and Steve. Never Adam and Steve. It’s Adam and Steven.

if psychoanalysis was late-19th-century secular Judaism’s way of constructing spiritual meaning in a post-religious world and retail is the late 20th century’s way of constructing meaning in a postreligious world, what does it mean that...

When you’re making something, you’re in a different state. You go into a deep level of concentration, to the point where you’re not self-conscious anymore, it’s just flowing out of you.

Everyone has an internal age, a time in life when one is, if not one’s best, then at very least one’s most authentic self. I always felt that my internal clock was calibrated somewhere between...

Deprived of the opportunity to judge one another by the cars we drive, New Yorkers, thrown together daily on mass transit, form silent opinions based on our choices of subway reading. Just by glimpsing the...

Before I sat down and became a writer, before I began to do it habitually and for my living, there was a decades-long stretch when I was terrified that it would suck, so I didn’t...

Central to living a life that is good is a life that’s forgiving. We’re creatures of contact, regardless of whether we kiss or we wound.

I am no fun at all. In fact, I am anti-fun. Not as in anti-violence, but as in anti-matter. I am not so much against fun – although I suppose I kind of am –...

Well into adulthood, writing has never gotten easier. It still only ever begins badly, and there are no guarantees that this is not the day when the jig is finally up.

Fantastic days are what you wish upon those who have so few sunrises left, those whose lungs are so lesion-spangled with new cancer that they should be embracing as much life as they can. Time’s...

There’s nothing particularly wrong with being more pessimistic than optimistic. Optimism is broad-based, non-detail-oriented thinking; pessimism is detail-oriented thinking.

Here’s the thing: I’m not beautiful. I mean, I’m a perfectly normal-looking Jewish guy. My face has never been my fortune, nor has my body… physical beauty has never been part of my equation. It’s...

‘Play It Again Sam’s opening shot is the same as ‘Purple Rose’s final one: a close-up of a face, rapt in a movie house. I’ve certainly felt that in my life. I’ve been known to...

A half roll of Life Savers fused to the pockets,And in yet another, a lone unwrapped mintHad bundled itself in a stole of gray lint.

There is nothing so cleansing or reassuring as a vicarious sadness.

I value kindness in myself and others. I try to remain super-vigilant about my targets and make extra sure that my sometimes barbed comments are deserved and in response to genuine malefaction.

Those weeks before diagnosis can be among the most torturous times. There is a reason you’re called a patient once the plastic bracelet goes on.

I aspire to write what are called ‘familiar essays.’ They begin in the personal and end in the universal. It’s not for me to say if I have been successful at it. But that is...

Arts and crafts, or getting to be in a play with people, or making a little short film, that’s pure sugar, because the stakes are so low.

…hanging out does not make one an artist. A secondhand wardrobe does not make one an artist. Neither do a hair-trigger temper, melancholic nature, propensity for tears, hating your parents, nor even HIV – I...

It’s rare that I’m not at work on some sort of craft project. I’ve often enthused about the need to make things; how it employs a unique set of muscles – physical, intellectual, spiritual –...

The rigors of creativity – the self-doubt, the revising, the solitude – do require a kind of self-consumption. It comes at a cost; a cost that isn’t for everyone.

I had a beautiful childhood and a lovely childhood. I just didn’t like being a child. I didn’t like the rank injustice of not being listened to. I didn’t like the lack of autonomy.

I can see a great beauty in acknowledging the fact that the world is dark.

During the act of making something, I experience a kind of blissful absence of the self and a loss of time. When I am done, I return to both feeling as restored as if I...

I’m anti-religious. I don’t like people telling me what to do.

At least three times a week, I am overwhelmed with a wave of gratitude to New York City for providing me with a life. Not that my life is so great, although I think it’s...

I have let half-decades elapse between books because books have to be writte and writing is awful, but if you are the type of person who makes things, there is no profit in worrying about...

I had a tumor. But it was great.

I do not go outdoors… As far as I’m concerned, the whole point of living in New York City is indoors. You want greenery? Order the spinach.

Almost any age is better than twenty-two.

My salvation lies in time spent alone with an X-Acto knife and commercial-grade adhesive.

I’m not sure. But that bless-his/her-heart kind of melancholic humor is among my favorite things in the world. I guess it exposes a kind of humanity – or that’s the hope, at least – a...

If you don’t have your experiences in the moment, if you gloss them over with jokes or zoom past them, you end up with curiously dispassionate memories.

Is there some lesson on how to be friends?I think what it means is that central to livinga life that is good is a life that’s forgiving.We’re creatures of contact regardless of whetherwe kiss or...

I find writing extraordinarily difficult and not very pleasurable, though I find having done it very pleasurable. I won’t lie about that.