The very idea that there is no truth, but only the filter of narrative through which truth is invented is something I learned at the feet of the most leftist professors at Yale and am learning again from Sarah Palin during the Vice Presidential debate, and I find that very disorienting.

What I've discovered more recently is copies of books that I didn't represent, but that my boss represented when I assisted her on the dollar pile. I won't mention any names, but it is this profoundly bittersweet time of realizing, "Oh, I had a wonderful time working on this book and now it is a dollar relic on the side of the road."

Specificity is the soul of narrative.

I would say aside from Moxie soda bottles and Masonic artifacts, there's nothing I really collect.

I am not beautiful, so I don't know why I'm making myself ugly. But the mustache stays.

I'm not a particularly religious person, but that feeling of getting transmissions from someplace else, even if it's from your own consciousness, is very, very real. To me, at least.

When you think about it, the end of the world is a little bit like death: We all know it's going to come eventually, and as we get older, we feel we see the signs more and more distinctly.