Book tours are excellent things, and one is lucky to get to go on one, but they have a way of leeching away one's will to live.

Book tours are excellent things, and one is lucky to get to go on one, but they have a way of leeching away one's will to live.

Read everything. If you haven't read everything, you'll never be able to write anything.

Genuinely social people never ceased to amaze him. Their brains seemed to generate an inexhaustible fund of things to say, naturally, with no effort, out of nothing at all.

As a teenager in Brooklyn Quentin had often imagined himself engaged in martial heroics, but after this he knew, as a cold immutable fact, that he would do anything necessary, sacrificing whatever or whomever he had to, to avoid risking exposure to physical violence. Shame never came into it. He embraced his new identity as a coward. He would run in the other direction. He would lie down and cry and put his arms over his head or play dead. It didn't matter what he had to do, he would do it and be glad.

Stop looking for the next secret door that is going to lead you to your real life. Stop waiting. This is it: there's nothing else.

Though the funny thing about never being asked for anything is that after a while you start to feel like maybe you don’t have anything worth giving.