Some praise me, some blame me. I go the other way. Sometimes those things that attract the most attention to us are the things which afford us the greatest privacy.
John Irving once told me he doesn’t start a novel until he knows the last sentence. I said, ‘My God, Irving, isn’t that like working in a factory?’
Most Americans pay lip service to the idea of freedom, but can’t handle real freedom.
Don’t be outraged, be outrageous.
Life’s an offensive proposition from beginning to end. Maybe those who can’t tolerate offense ought to just go ahead and end it all, and maybe those who demand financial compensation for offense ought to have it ended for them.
I am looking for the novelists whose writing is an extension of their intellect rather than an extension of their neurosis.
If little else, the brain is an educational toy.
Reality is contradictory. And it’s paradoxical.
Survival is not important. What matters is how you survive.
Love is the ultimate outlaw. It just won’t adhere to any rules. The most any of us can do is sign on as its accomplice.
I like travelers, but I don’t like tourists. The difference is that travelers don’t shop and they don’t play golf.
Fire is the reuniting of matter with oxygen. If one bears that in mind, every blaze may be seen as a reunion, an occasion of chemical joy.
Of the seven deadly sins, lust is definitely the pick of the litter.
Violence stinks no matter which side of it you’re on. But now and then there’s nothing left to do but hit the other person over the head with a frying pan.
The scientist keeps the romantic honest, and the romantic keeps the scientist human.
You’ve heard of people calling in sick. You may have called in sick a few times yourself. But have you ever thought about calling in well.
Well, there’s one thing to be said for money. It can make you rich.
A child’s mind is its living room; it’s is going to be residing there for the rest of its earthly existence.
When we’re incomplete, we’re always searching for somebody to complete us. When, after a few years or a few months of a relationship, we find that we’re still unfulfilled, we blame our partners and take up with somebody more promising. This can go on and on – series polygamy – until we admit that while a partner can add sweet dimensions to our lives, we, each of us, are responsible for our own fulfillment. Nobody else can provide it for us, and to believe otherwise is to delude ourselves dangerously and to program for eventual failure every relationship we enter.
So you think that you’re a failure, do you? Well, you probably are. What’s wrong with that? In the first place, if you’ve any sense at all you must have learned by now that we pay just as dearly for our triumphs as we do for our defeats. Go ahead and fail. But fail with wit, fail with grace, fail with style. A mediocre failure is as insufferable as a mediocre success. Embrace failure! Seek it out. Learn to love it. That may be the only way any of us will ever be free.