If only we were wiser or better people, perhaps the gods would explain to us the mad, unbearable things they do.

We need a Napoleon. An Alexander. Except that Napoleon lost in the end, and Alexander flamed out and died young. We need a Julius Caesar, except that he made himself a dictator, and died for it.

Please don't disillusion me. I haven't had breakfast yet.

That was interesting, to find that it wasn't hunger that caused children to become bullies on the street. The bulliness was already in the child, and whatever the stakes were, they would find a way to act as they needed to act. … Intelligence and education, which all these children had, apparently didn't make any important difference in human nature.

it was all your genes that made us geniuses, mom. said peter. we sure didn't get any from dad. i heard that. father said, not looking up from the news that was being displayed on the table while he ate it would've been wasted if you hadn't

Writer’s block is my unconscious mind telling me that something I’ve just written is either unbelievable or unimportant to me, and I solve it by going back and reinventing some part of what I’ve already written so that when I write it again, it is believable and interesting to me. Then I can go on. Writer’s block is never solved by forcing oneself to “write through it,” because you haven’t solved the problem that caused your unconscious mind to rebel against the story, so it still won’t work – for you or for the reader.

There is a myth that homosexuals are 'born that way,' and we are pounded with this idea so thoroughly that many people think that somebody, somewhere, must have proved it.