Just when you begin thinking of yourself as memorable, you run into someone who can't even remember having met you

This was not of the nature of a Christlike lesson for Owen Meany to learn, as he lay in the manger, that someone you hate can give you a hard-on.

What has been violated here is your freedom of choice, and every woman's freedom of choice, too.

When I feel like being a director, I write a novel.

When I was still in prep school - 14, 15 - I started keeping notebooks, journals. I started writing, almost like landscape drawing or life drawing. I never kept a diary, I never wrote about my day and what happened to me, but I described things.

And I don't want to begin something, I don't want to write that first sentence until all the important connections in the novel are known to me. As if the story has already taken place, and it's my responsibility to put it in the right order to tell it to you.

Everyone has a right to be a little happy, asshole.