“Nobody gets through life without losing a few things on the way.”

“Can't make an omelette without killing a few people.”

“Some of the things are the same no matter which world you're in, kid. One of 'em is this: The quickest way out of something is usually straight through it.”

“Truly, life is wasted on the living, Nobody Owens. For one of us is too foolish to live, and it is not I.”

“Sometimes life is hard. Things go wrong—in life and in love and in business and in friendship and in health and in all the other ways that life can go wrong. And when things get tough, this is what you should do: make good art. . . . Someone on the internet thinks what you’re doing is stupid or evil or it’s all been done before: make good art. Probably things will work out somehow, eventually time will take the sting away, and it doesn’t even matter. Do what only you can do best: make good art.”

“There was a hysteria in there, certainly, but there was also the exhaustion of someone who had managed, somehow, to believe several dozen impossible things in the last twenty-four hours, without ever getting a proper breakfast.”

“And life is a good thing for a writer. It's where we get our raw material, for a start. We quite like to stop and watch it.”