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

If you are any kind of an artist, then validation . . . can be a result, but you're going to do the work anyway.

If you read someone else's diary, you get what you deserve.

In the beginning, I was put off by the harshness of German. Someone would order a piece of cake, and it sounded as if it were an actual order, like, "Cut the cake and lie facedown in that ditch between the cobbler and the little girl."

Sometimes you read something and it's just -- it doesn't invite a reader....Sometimes you read something and it's not saying, 'oh come in, come in have a seat. I'm going to tell you what happened.' Perhaps my writing comes off as conversational...and that takes effort.

My feet are completely flat, but for most of my life they were still shaped like feet. Now, thanks to bunions, they're shaped more like states, wide boring ones that nobody wants to drive through.

Like anyone nostalgic for a time he didn't live through, I chose to weed out the little inconveniences: polio, say, or the thought of eating stewed squirrel. The world was simply grander back then, somehow more civilized, and nicer to look at.