Language, she said, was just our way to explain away the wonder and glory of the world. To deconstruct. To dismiss. She said people can't deal with how beautiful the world really is. How it can't be explained and understood.

A comedy ends with a wedding, and a tragedy ends with a funeral: you always have to juxtapose sex and death.

Las Vegas looks the way you'd imagine heaven must look at night.

You could stab a knife right through my heart and you'd be too late.

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.

Hope is something really tough and tenacious you have to give up. It’s an addiction to break.

I'm not really into comfort books. There are too many of those as it is. Just sort of narcotic books, like my grandmother used to read. They have value like Paxil has value, but there's plenty of them in the world already. There's a shortage of confronting, stimulating, exciting books.