We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful what we pretend to be.

I tell you, we are here on earth to fart around, and don't let anybody tell you different.

Here we are, trapped in the amber of the moment. There is no why.

Roses are red and ready for plucking, You're sixteen and ready for high school.

Like so many Americans, she was trying to construct a life that made sense from things she found in gift shops.

I'm eighty-three and I've been smoking since I was eleven. I'm suing the cigarette company because it promised to kill me and it hasn't.

Any reviewer who expresses rage and loathing for a novel is preposterous. He or she is like a person who has put on full armor and attacked a hot fudge sundae.

Find a subject you care about and which you in your heart feel others should care about. It is the genuine caring, and not your games with language, which will be the most compelling and seductive element in your style.

He adapted to what there was to adapt to.

...Americans are forever searching for love in forms it never takes, in places it can never be. It must have something to do with the vanished frontier.