You tell yourself that noise is what defines silence. Without noise, silence would not be golden. Noise is the exception. Think of deep outer space, the incredible cold and quiet where your wife and kid wait. Silence, not heaven, would be reward enough.

Find good in what the world says is evil.

Idiot people like Angel Delaporte who look for a supernatural reason for ordinary events, those people drive Misty nuts.

So often with beginning writers, the story that they want to start with is the most important story of their life - my molestation, my this, my horrible drug addiction - they want to tell that most important story, and they don't have the skills to tell it yet, so it ends up becoming a comedy. A powerful story told poorly becomes funny, it just makes people laugh behind their hands.

A hotel, he told me, was a big house where a lot of people lived and ate and slept, but no one knew each other. He said that described most families in the outside world.

The only biodiversity we're going to have left is Coke versus Pepsi. We're landscaping the whole world one stupid mistake at a time.

People die', she says. 'People tear down houses. But furniture, fine, beautiful furniture, it just goes on and on, surviving everything.' She says, 'Armoires are the cockroaches of our culture.