Better to fail at what you love than succeed at what you hate. People have strange ideas about success ... too much to do with money, not enough to do with joy.

I'm making out with a dead girl in my dreams. I'm screwing women I have no business screwing. I'm pushing away the one person who actually gives a damn about me. It's like the Bermuda Triangle of heartache and I'm sinking fast.

Poverty made me feel weak, as if I were coming down with an awful, debilitating, communicable disease - the disease of being without money. Instead of going to the hospital, you went to the poor farm. The difference was, you never got well at the poor farm.

For my money, there are no more fascinating, hard-working, vulnerable creatures on earth than writers. Every day, they lay their souls out there for public approval or rejection.

Another chapter closes before it has the chance to begin

This is New York, babe. Be ready to expect anything.

I always fantasized about having a girl stand on my bar like in that movie Coyote Ugly, but I never thought it would happen.