“Requesting permission from someone to be honest is really a way of accusing the other person of being so demanding or overbearing that you couldn't be honest all along.”

“Meanness on request isn't meanness at all, but kindness carried too far.”

“Everyone loves a witch hunt as long as it's someone else's witch being hunted.”

“What was more humiliating, I wondered: having to beg for someone's cold chicken bones or being offered them?”

“He knows, as all the cleverest ones do, that no human being is so interesting that he can't make himself more interesting still by acting retarded at random intervals. ”

“He looked like a being who'd voyaged back through time from a world that had overcome illness, pain, and conflict.”

“My advice for aspiring writers is go to New York. And if you can’t go to New York, go to the place that represents New York to you, where the standards for writing are high, there are other people who share your dreams, and where you can talk, talk, talk about your interests. Writing books begins in talking about it, like most human projects, and in being close to those who have already done what you propose to do.”