I wasn't a social drinker. I used to say that I didn't want to go to bars because they were full of assholes like me.

But it's hard for a man to give up all his pleasures, even when they don't pleasure him no more.

Optimism is a perfectly legitimate response to failure.

She is a cat with a burning tail, an ant under a microscope, a fly about to lose its wings to the curious plucking fingers of a third-grader on a rainy day, a game for bored children with no bodies and the whole universe at their feet.

It's like many other things in life, Ellie. You keep on the path and all's well. You get off it and the next thing you know you're lost if you're not lucky.

Most books about writing are filled with bullshit. Fiction writers, present company included, don’t understand very much about what they do—not why it works when it’s good, not why it doesn’t when it’s bad.

Everything in moderation. And that includes a couple of beers a day.