I find it a huge strain to be responsible for my tastes and be known and defined by them.

I had a Viking sense of entitlement to whatever provisions I could plunder.

Sounded to me like he had a pretty good idea what he was saying," Van replied, with surprisingly little anger. "It's a pity he had to overintellectualize like that. He did such good work, and then he had to go and intellectualize it.

Fiction is a solution, the best solution, to the problem of existential solitude.

If you're interested in how people behave, if you're interested in the way they talk about themselves, the way the conceive of themselves, it's very hard to ignore drugs nowadays, because that is so much part of the conversation.

I can't stomach any kind of notion that serious fiction is good for us, because I don't believe that everything that's wrong with the world has a cure.

I wanted all of her and resented other boys for wanting any part of her.