I find that by putting things in writing I can understand them and see them a little more objectively. ... For words are merely tools and if you use the right ones you can actually put even your life in order, if you don't lie to yourself and use the wrong words.

I felt a strange tightness coming over me, and I reacted instinctively – for the first time in a long, long while – by slipping my notebook into my belt and reaching down to take off my watch. The first thing to go in a street fight is your watch, and once you’ve lost a few, you develop a certain instinct that lets you know when it’s time to get the thing off your wrist and into a safe pocket.

I hate pain, despite my ability to tolerate it beyond all known parameters, which is not necessarily a good thing.

America... just a nation of two hundred million used car salesmen with all the money we need to buy guns and no qualms about killing anybody else in the world who tries to make us uncomfortable.

Every deadline was a crisis … No doubt it has something to do with a deep-seated personality defect, or maybe a kink in whatever blood vessel leads into the pineal gland … On the other hand, it might easily be something as simple and basically perverse as whatever instinct it is that causes a jackrabbit to wait until the last possible second to dart across the road in front of a speeding car.

Richard Nixon looks like a flaming liberal today, compared to a golem like George Bush. Indeed. Where is Richard Nixon now that we finally need him?

It was one of those fine little love stories that can make you smile in your sleep at night.