You know, I'm just a very boring, not very funny person in person. I don't feel pressured to be otherwise.

[T]he normal and the everyday are often amazingly unstoppable, and what is unimaginable is the cessation of them. The world is resilient, and, no matter what interruptions occur, people so badly want to return to their lives and get on with them. A veneer of civilization descends quickly, like a shining rain. Dust is settled.

Pleasantness was the machismo of the Midwest. There was something athletic about it. You flexed your face into a smile and let it hover there like the dare of a cat.

The only really good piece of advice I have for my students is, 'Write something you'd never show your mother or father. And you know what they say? I could never do that!'

All the world's a stage we're going through.

Things between us were dissolving like an ice cub in a glass: the smaller it got, the faster it disappeared.

Your numbness is something perhaps you cannot help. It is what the world has done to you. But your coldness. That is what you do to the world.