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

Once you've been talked to by voices, it's not possible to go back to a world where talking voices is not possible.

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

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.

My only hope was to be polite.

We're here to get each other through this thing, whatever it is.

Life for the unwell is discontinuous and unpredictable. Things just come out of nowhere. People try but mostly do a lousy job of taking care of you.