It took years after I’d graduated from Amherst to realize that people were actually far more complicated and interesting than books, that almost everyone else suffered the same secret fears and inadequacies as I, and that feeling alone and inferior was actually the great valent bond between us all. I wish I’d been smart enough to understand that when I was an adolescent.

...most Substance-addicted people are also addicted to thinking, meaning they have a compulsive and unhealthy relationship with their own thinking.

I will probably write an hour a day and spend eight hours a day biting my knuckle and worrying about not writing.

The fun of reading as "an exchange between consciousnesses, a way for human beings to talk to each other about stuff we can't normally talk about."

There are secrets within secrets, though--always.

Rap's conscious response to the poverty and oppression of U.S. blacks is like some hideous parody of sixties black pride.

If your fidelity to perfectionism is too high, you never do anything.