Hope is a horrible thing, you know. I don't know who decided to package hope as a virtue because it's not. It's a plague. Hope is like walking around with a fishhook in your mouth and somebody just keeps pulling it and pulling it.

I always used to be an inside person, and now I'm an outside person.

That was the way things worked. When you were looking for the big fight, the moment that you thought would knock everything over, nothing much happened at all.

If what a person wants is his life, he tends to be quiet about wanting anything else. Once the life begins to seem secure, one feels the freedom to complain.

I am the person who is appropriating stories that are not mine and turning them into a book.

I could teach. I could wait tables. I could cook in a restaurant. Food and teaching were the two skills I had.

I think the best vacation is the one that relieves me of my own life for a while and then makes me long for it again.