I write about broken people who need other people in order to go on. But those are the only kind of people I know to exist. We are all broken.

You cannot invent an algorithm that is as good at recommending books as a good bookseller, and that's the secret weapon of the bookstore - is that no algorithm will ever understand readers the way that other readers can understand readers.

Right, well, he'd been sick for a while and his nurse said to him, 'You seem to be feeling better this morning,' and Isben looked at her and said, 'On the contrary,' and then he died.

it is the nature of stars to cross

Why are breakfast foods breakfast foods?

The ideas of directing attention outward, trying to imagine other people complexly, trying not to see myself as the center of the universe - these concepts have become important to me, and I hope they're at work in my life on a minute-by-minute basis.

You can't not like "The Great Gatsby." It's got the best sentences in, like, ever.