The real world is horrible.

Everybody wanted to be the hero of their own story. Nobody wanted to be comic relief.

She tortured everybody around her, but only because she was more tortured than anyone.

You're all so obsessed with other worlds, you're so convinced that this one is crap and everywhere else is great, but you've never bothered to figure out what's going on here!

I read a lot of literary theory when I was in graduate school, especially about novels, and the best book I ever read about endings was Peter Brooks' 'Reading for the Plot. '

You don't want to move toward some utopian literary situation where everybody's free of all conventions. That's ridiculous! Conventions are what you need. You have nothing to break down if you don't have conventions.

It was strange to be naked in front of anybody. It was like that cold water out there in the bay: scary, you didn’t think you could stand it, but then you plunged in and pretty soon you got used to it. There was enough hiding in life. Sometimes you just wanted to show somebody your tits.