You don't want to get that sort of sound in your writing that boing that gives you away.

It's a shallow life that doesn't give a person a few scars.

Have interesting failures.... If you need to have a personal crisis have it now. Don't wait until midlife, when it will take longer to resolve.... Don't pity yourselves. Lighten up. Seek people with a sense of humor. Avoid humorless people-and do not marry one, for God's sake.

Face it: a nation that maintains a 72% approval rating on George W. Bush is a nation with a very loose grip on reality.

I usually don't work with other people; I do the whole show myself.

When you're in your 20s, your 30s, even, you have - at least, I had - vast ambitions, and you sit around mooning about these things, and you're depressed, because you haven't done them. And it takes you a long time to come to the realization that if you can't be John Updike, well, then, you can't.

Anyone who thinks sitting in church can make you a Christian must also think that sitting in a garage can make you a car.