You can never get the smell of smoke out. Like the smell of failure in life.

Being a famous writer is a little like being a tall dwarf. You're on the edge of normality.

The muttered hint, "Remember, you have a stroke here," freezes my joints like a blast from Siberia.

Basically it's true that my own life has been my chief window for life in America, beginning with my childhood and the conflicts, the struggles, the strains that I felt in my own family.

Everybody who tells you how to act has whiskey on their breath.

Affairs, ... , like everything else, ask too much.

There is no such thing as static happiness. Happiness is a mixed thing, a thing compounded of sacrifices, and losses, and betrayals.