I've moved away from that sort of deep-ecological extremism. I started to think: what can we do for wild birds right now? I don't want these particular species to disappear.

Depression presents itself as a realism regarding the rottenness of the world in general and the rottenness of your life in particular. But the realism is merely a mask for depression's actual essence, which is an overwhelming estrangement from humanity. The more persuaded you are of your unique access to the rottenness, the more afraid you become of engaging with the world; and the less you engage with the world, the more perfidiously happy-faced the rest of humanity seems for continuing to engage with it.

It's very liberating for me to realize that I don't have to step up to the plate with a plot that involves the U.N. Security Council.

Birds were like dinosaurs' better selves. They had short lives and long summers. We all should be so lucky as to leave behind such heirs.

There is, after all, a kind of happiness in unhappiness, if it's the right unhappiness.

Today's Baudelaires are hip-hop artists.

Brooklyn was like Philadelphia made better by its proximity to Manhattan.