There are very few innocent sentences in writing.

In dark times, the definition of good art would seem to be art that locates and applies CPR to those elements of what's human and magical that still live and glow despite the times' darkness. Really good fiction could have as dark a worldview as it wished, but it'd find a way both to depict this world and to illuminate the possibilities for being alive and human in it.

The basic idea that the purpose of life is to be happy or is to experience the most favorable ratio of pleasure to suffering or productivity to work or gratification to sacrifice or any of that stuff, which, you know, a couple generations ago, to say that kind of stuff would have made you, you know, a freak - a freak and an Epicurean - and now seems to be so much - simply an unquestioned assumption of the culture that we don't really even talk about it anymore.

Everything I’ve ever let go of has claw marks on it.

You get to consciously decide what has meaning and what doesn't. You get to decide what to worship.

Talent is its own expectation, Jim: you either live up to it or it waves a hankie, receding forever.

Worship your body, beauty, and sexual allure and you will die a million deaths before they finally grieve you.