I burned the candle at both ends and it often gave a lovely light.

I think the cultural task is to separate our impulses and needs and desires from the supernatural and, above all, from the superstitious.

The fragility of love is what is most at stake here—humanity's most crucial three-word avowal is often uttered only to find itself suddenly embarrassing or orphaned or isolated or ill-timed—but strangely enough it can work better as a literal or reassuring statement than a transcendent or numinous or ecstatic one.

In the grip of a neurological disorder, I am fast losing control of words even as my relationship with the world has been reduced to them.

Religion attacks us in our deepest integrity by saying we wouldn't be able to make a moral decision without it.

Exercise is a pastime only for those who are already slender and physically fit. It just isn't so much fun when you have a marked tendency to wheeze and throw up, and a cannonball of a belly sloshing around inside the baggy garments.

All the time, I've felt that life is a wager and that I probably was getting more out of leading a bohemian existence as a writer than I would have if I didn't.