You don't ask people with knives in their stomachs what would make them happy; happiness is no longer the point. It's all about survival; it's all about whether you pull the knife out and bleed to death or keep it in.

It's no wonder we're all such a mess, is it? We're like Tom Hanks in Big. Little boys and girls trapped in adult bodies and forced to get on with it.

I would like my personal reading map to resemble a map of the British Empire circa 1900.

You're not allowed to say anything about books because they're books, and books are, you know, God.

There were about seventy-nine squillion people in the world, and if you were very lucky, you would end up being loved by fifteen or twenty of them.

[H]ow was I supposed to get excited about the oppression of females if they couldn't be trusted to stay upright during the final minutes of a desperately close promotion campaign?

Everyone knows how to talk, and no one knows what to say.