It's regrets that make painful memories. When I was crazy I did everything just right.

Without writers fooling themselves about what their books might accomplish there would be no books at all.

The most radical, audacious thing to think is that there might be some point to working hard and thinking hard and reading hard and writing hard and trying to be of service

Put on all the armor of the Lord. Not just the pretty stuff.

What occurs to people when they read Kurt [Vonnegut] is that things are much more up for grabs than they thought they were. The world is a slightly different place just because they read a damn book. Imagine that.

I didn't like the '60s because it was too important what people who had nothing to do with the war thought about it.

With mental illness the trick is to not take your feelings so seriously; you’re zooming in and zooming away from things that go from being too important to being not important at all.