“To me, God is like this happy bus driver.”

“From diapers on, I felt like there was something not good about me, but it was invisible to everybody but my mother. And whenever she looked at me, she had to let me know that she knew. That was her mission in life.”

“Not doing something crude right off is about as close as a guy like me ever gets to class.”

“Sometimes I feel like a writer, sometimes I just feel like a snitch.”

“There were mornings I thought drugs made me insane and mornings I thought they kept me from going that way.”

“This book, for me, is less an exercise in recall than exorcism.”

“Nothing ever turns me on so much in a woman as unhappiness.”