If you build a better mousetrap, Nature will build a better mouse.

If you cannot stand a spoon upright in the cup, then the coffee is too weak.

People don't get to change things. Things change people once in a while, but people don't change things.

I wanted a drink. There were a hundred reasons why a man will want a drink, but I wanted one now for the most elementary reason of all. I didn't want to feel what I was feeling, and a voice within was telling me that I needed a drink, that I couldn't bear it without it. But that voice is a liar. You can always bear the pain. It'll hurt, it'll burn like acid in an open wound, but you can stand it. And, as long as you can make yourself go on choosing the pain over the relief, you can keep going.

One thing that helps is to give myself permission to write badly. I tell myself that I'm going to do my five or 10 pages no matter what, and that I can always tear them up the following morning if I want. I'll have lost nothing-writing and tearing up five pages would leave me no further behind than if I took the day off.

I don't know about the rest of the country but in New York more people have learned anonymity from rent control than ever discovered it in a twelve-step program.

I’ve tried writing and the sentences come out fine, but I write a few pages and I don’t want to go on.