Out in the world I go! Muggers! Autograph hounds! Junkies! People with real jobs! Maybe an easy lay! United Nation functionaries and diplomats!

It is always pitiful when any human being falls into a condition hardly more respectable than that of an animal. How much more pitiful it is when the person who falls has had all the advantages!

The only way to get anything out of a writer's brains is to leave him or her alone until he or she is damn well ready to write it down.

Because we grew up surrounded by big dramatic story arcs in books and movies, we think our lives are supposed to be filled with huge ups and downs. So people pretend there is drama where there is none.

New knowledge is the most valuable commodity on earth. The more truth we have to work with, the richer we become.

When we passed a Catholic church, I recalled, he said, "You think your dad's a good chemist? They're turning soda crackers into meat in there. Can your dad do that?

He is in a constant state of stage fright, he says, because he never knows what part of his life he is going to have to act in next