Now I don't drink, and I get up in the morning and I write in my diary, and I can write in my diary for hours if I feel like it. And I'm still sober so I can write the stories that I'm working on, and I can sit at the desk as long as I need to. So that changed a lot, I think.

The combination of ammonia and chloride can be lethal but I've discovered it can work miracles as long as you keep telling yourself, "I want to love, I want to live.

He's as nutty as a vegan T-bone.

Jeremy, Good luck on your first marriage.

The Korean man nodded, the way you do when you’re a foreigner and understand that someone has finished a sentence.

I've never made up events, but I've always been a big exaggerator. It's written on my humorist license that I'm allowed to do that.

As I searched the atlas for somewhere to run to, Hugh made a case for his old stomping grounds. His first suggestion was Beirut, where he went to nursery school. His family left there in the midsixties and moved to the Congo. After that, it was Ethiopia, and then Somalia, all fine places in his opinion. 'Let's save Africa and the Middle East for when I decide to quit living,' I said.