“Writers have no real area of expertise. They are merely generalists with a highly inflamed sense of punctuation.”

“Start dating someone who is funny, someone who has what in high school you called a "really great sense of humor" and what now your creative writing class calls "self-contempt giving rise to comic form." Write down all of his jokes, but don't tell him you are doing this. Make up anagrams of his old girlfriend's name and name all of your socially handicapped characters with them. Tell him his old girlfriend is in all of your stories and then watch how funny he can be, see what a really great sense of humor he can have.”

“A lie to the faithless is merely a conversation in their language. ”

“The catalog showed a man sleeping peacefully while his model-wife read a book in soft but focused light. In real life, however, the light was so intense that the same man would have had to wear sunglasses.”

“The proper relationship of a writer to his or her own life is similar to a cook with a cupboard. What the cook takes from the cupboard is not the same thing as what is in the cupboard.”

“This was my modest dream come true: unambitious flight. The kind that never even got high enough for a view.”

“I always had the sense with her that she didn't suffer fools gladly but that life was taking great pains to show her how.”