I let go. Lost in oblivion. Dark and silent and complete. I found freedom. Losing all hope was freedom.
Nothing of me is original. I am the combined effort of everyone I’ve ever known.
I don’t want to die without any scars.
People take conventional ways that other people have always decorated their cars, and use them as ways of giving other people permission to approach them.
Every stage of life has its own form of power, and we’re always sort of terrified as to whether we can make the jump to the next form of power.
Our real discoveries come from chaos, from going to the place that looks wrong and stupid and foolish.
Imagine books and music and movies being filtered and homogenized. Certified. Approved for consumption. People will be happy to give up most of their culture for the assurance that the tiny bit that comes through is safe and clean. White noise.
Ultimately, everyone is acting out of what they feel is the best choice. In a way, they’re all trying to improve the world. And I think that those basic choices make the world a better place.
It seems that so much writing is being done in the nineteenth-century model, where every connection has to be thoroughly explained.
Every woman is just a different kind of problem.
My books are always about someone obtaining a power to replace the previous sort of power that they held.
If you worry about disaster all the time, that’s what you’re going to get.
A good story should make you laugh, and a moment later break your heart.
That if you could acquire enough, accomplish enough, you’d never want to own or do another thing. That if you could eat or sleep enough, you’d never need more. That if enough people loved you, you’d stop needing love.
All God does is watch us and kill us when we get boring. We must never, ever be boring.
To some of us, the nights are too long. To some, the days.
If you don’t know what you want, you end up with a lot you don’t.
And the more she could imagine this island, the less she liked the real world. The more she could imagine the people, the less she liked any real people.
If you love something set it free, but don’t be surprised if it comes back with herpes.
I’m never going to have to work. None of my descendants are ever going to have to work; this is going to make me so much money. It was such a letdown when I realized that wasn’t my invention.