“Everyone has a book inside them, it's just a matter of getting it out”

“Sometimes life can be unexpected. Sometimes things surprise you and all you can do is roll with the punches or let them beat you to a bloody pulp. -Sage Hannigan, Contingency”

“Seriously, this old woman had no idea how close she came to being squashed like a roach. -Sage Hannigan, Contingency”

“I was either still dreaming or I had entered an alternate reality where I was a flippin' insane person. I doubted I had entered an alternate reality and a quick slap to my own face proved I wasn't still dreaming. -Sage Hannigan, Contingency”

“It's not that students don't "get" Kafka's humor but that we've taught them to see humor as something you get -- the same way we've taught them that a self is something you just have. No wonder they cannot appreciate the really central Kafka joke -- that the horrific struggle to establish a human self results in a self whose humanity is inseparable from that horrific struggle. That our endless and impossible journey toward home is in fact our home. It's hard to put into words up at the blackboard, believe me. You can tell them that maybe it's good they don't "get" Kafka. You can ask them to imagine his art as a kind of door. To envision us readers coming up and pounding on this door, pounding and pounding, not just wanting admission but needing it, we don't know what it is but we can feel it, this total desperation to enter, pounding and pushing and kicking, etc. That, finally, the door opens...and it opens outward: we've been inside what we wanted all along. Das ist komisch.”

“For writers: If you polish a book too much, it'll be flat and shiny and smooth--and not too interesting. It's the little pits and bumps and whatnot that show voice and make a book unique from all the other super shiny flat surfaces”

“Normal is not something to aspire to, it's something to get away from.”