I think it's very important for writers and artists generally to be witnesses to the world, and to be transparent. To let other people speak... to travel... to experience the world. And memorialize it.

The suicide does not play the game, does not observe the rules. He leaves the party too soon, and leaves the other guests painfully uncomfortable.

I've never given up. I've always kept going. I don't feel that I could afford to give up. That would be the beginning of the end.

It's always a challenge to discover the most effective first sentence, and the most effective final sentence, in a chapter for instance, and in the book as a whole.

The only people who claim that money is not important are people who have enough money so that they are relieved of the ugly burden of thinking about it.

Keep a light, hopeful heart. But ­expect the worst.

A mouth of no distinction but well practiced, before I entered my teens, in irony. For what is irony but the repository of hurt? And what is hurt but the repository of hope?