Note to self: being Kurt's son, being an ex-mental patient, getting into Harvard, having written a book, and being a doctor are all things that in and of themselves do not make a life. If you lean on them too hard, you'll find that there's not much there. But if you add up a lot of things that aren't in and of themselves enough, it almost starts to add up to something.

Reading and writing are in themselves subversive acts. What they subvert is the notion that things have to be the way they are, that you are alone, that no one has ever felt the way you have.

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

Who but a brazen crazy person would go one-on-one with blank paper or canvas armed with nothing but ideas?

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

Most adults have forgotten what they had to do to survive childhood.

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