Even the company of the mad was better than the company of the dead.

I don't want to speak too disparagingly of my generation (actually I do, we had a chance to change the world and opted for the Home Shopping Network instead), but there was a view among the student writers I knew at that time that good writing came spontaneously, in an uprush of feeling that had to be caught at once; when you were building that all-important stairway to heaven, you couldn't just stand around with your hammer in your hand.

People can be stunningly unobservant.

If there's one American belief I hold above all others, it's that those who would set themselves up in judgment on matters of what is "right" and what is "best" should be given no rest; that they should have to defend their behavior most stringently. ... As a nation, we've been through too many fights to preserve our rights of free thought to let them go just because some prude with a highlighter doesn't approve of them

Our memories have voices, too. Often sad ones that clamor like raised arms in the dark.

Sarcastic people tend to be marshmallows underneath the armor

The glory of a good tale is that it is limitless and fluid; a good tale belongs to each reader in its own particular way.