Life is unjust and this is what makes it so beautiful. Every day is a gift. Be brave and take hold of it.

Travel is the art form available to Everyman. You sit in the coffee shop in a strange city and nobody knows who you are, or cares, and so you shed your checkered past and your motley credentials and you face the day unarmed ... And onward we go and some day in the distant future, we will stop and turn around in astonishment to see all the places we've been and the heroes we were.

Humor is not about problems with airline luggage handlers. It's about our lives in America and it's about the ends of our lives and it's about everything that happens after that and everything that happened before.

Children can find other children to be pals. Children need fathers to be fathers.

You're such a big liar you gotta get your neighbor to call your dog.

A lovely thing about Christmas is that it's compulsory, like a thunderstorm, and we all go through it together.

I love New York, and I'm drawn to a certain intensity of life, but I've just never felt like I want to escape from the Midwest. A writer lives a great deal in his own head, and so one intuitively finds places where your head is more clear. New York for me is one of those places.