“Dangerous thing, giving humanity the knowledge of good and evil. And the capacity to make the wrong choice more often than not.”

“One thing that helps is to give myself permission to write badly. I tell myself that I’m going to do my five or 10 pages no matter what, and that I can always tear them up the following morning if I want. I’ll have lost nothing—writing and tearing up five pages would leave me no further behind than if I took the day off.”

“Serendipity. Look for something, find something else, and realize that what you've found is more suited to your needs than what you thought you were looking for. ”

“I don't know about the rest of the country but in New York more people have learned anonymity from rent control than ever discovered it in a twelve-step program.”

“I wouldn't presume to define noir - if we could define it, we wouldn't need to use a French word for it - but it seems to me it's more a way of looking at the world than what one sees.”

“People don't get to change things. Things change people once in a while, but people don't change things.”

“My glass was empty. I poured more scotch into it, took a small sip, and all at once the silly thing was empty again. Strange. Then it was full again. And then it was empty again. Strange, I thought. Fool glass must have a hole in it. Scotch disappears the instant it's poured. Strange. Then I was stretched out on the bed, too tired and too drunk to bother removing my shoes. My eyes closed themselves and the world crept away on little cat feet, leaving me floating in the middle of the air.”