The lines we draw that make us who we are are potent by virtue of being non-negotiable, and even, at some level, indefensible.

The strange anthropological lesson of social media is that human beings, if given a choice, often prefer to socialise alone.

A writer is someone who tells you one thing so someday he can tell his readers another thing: what he was thinking but declined to say, or what he would have thought had he been wiser. A writer turns his life into material, and if you're in his life, he uses yours, too.

I still believe in love. I always will. It's my blessing and my burden.

Art, art of any kind, shows that folks are trying.

realized that at a level I'd never been conscious we'd been engaged in a game of wits for years. I suppose most writer-subject pairings are like that. Of course, I'd set aside my plan to write about him [Clark Rockfeller] as soon as I'd gotten to know him some, but now I'd resumed that intention.

It's no accident that most self-help groups use 'anonymous' in their names; to Americans, the first step toward redemption is a ritual wiping out of the self, followed by the construction of a new one.