The future and eternity are two entirely different things.

If nothing else, we simply get used to being alive.

Life always kills you in the end, but first it prevents you from getting what you want.

I've got 911 on speed dial.

A man in a bookstore buys a book on loneliness and every woman in the store hits on him. A woman buys a book on loneliness and the store clears out.

Lottery tickets are a surtax on desperation.

There's nothing cure or funny or lovable about being cheap. It's a total turn-off.

New York is a theme park for people with IQs over 108.

Telling people they look relaxed makes them look relaxed.

Once you see someone lose it, you can never look at them the same way again.

The harder you try to become the opposite of your parents, the more quickly you become them.

Star Trek characters never go shopping.

The person who needs the other person the least in a relationship is the stronger member.

You can only fall in love six times in your life. Choose wisely.

I know it's not cat food, but what exactly is it that they put inside of tinned ravioli?

It's weird when people start sentences with 'frankly' - as if their other sentences don't count.

Thinking you're immortal is weirdly similar to being immortal.

People say if you're doing an art project, that's different from a book, but I honestly don't see it. I try and try, and I just don't.

My house. It's kind of eccentric. It's two decades worth of accumulated personal projects. Yeah, it is pretty dense in my house.

In my mind, I've always checked out in 2037; that's always been my expiration date. I'll be 75.

I think half the people who get married now have met online. If I think about all the people in my life who married - they met online, online, online. And it makes sense if you think about it, because you fill out this form of 35 things that really define you and - bam - look, you've got two people who match. It works.

I think most people either forget or don't know that Microsoft only hires people with I.Q.'s well over 130.

In Canada, we're happy to provide a safe haven for next-door neighbors in the middle of a marital dispute. And if anyone trips while crossing the border, we're happy to set their broken bones for free.

Nobody likes being told who or what they are.

I'm agoraphobic. I can't deal with crowds.

Any passion to collect has some meaning behind it.

The way we experience history and time in all its forms shifted quite massively between 1989 and 2001 - to the point where contrivances like decades are now kind of silly.

I tend to look for pathologies everywhere.

We were never supposed to live until 40. We were built to self-destruct at 30, whether from cancer or mental illness. We're all going way beyond our expiration date.

When you write, it's just a much more crystalline, compressed version of the voice you think with - though not the one you speak with. I think your writing voice is your laser-guided missile. It's the poetry part of you.

If you have a great idea, you should be able to communicate it as well. It's like the sound of one hand clapping. You have a great idea but aren't able to express it - well, how great was the idea?

If you write fiction, you have to love your characters. It's like your family. You don't have to like them, but you have to love them.

I'm always looking for things that are so incredibly present that they become invisible.

Comedy is the difference between how you see a person and how they see themselves.

The Internet has destroyed irony in the world, or at least wounded it considerably. What are we to do about an invention whose end result is that starving people in China are looking up things on marthastewart.com?

I've always thought that you live in the present, you live in a specific present. You are writing, present tense, so write in the present as it is.

The one thing about my life that's different from others is that I wake up for no one, and for some reason, that's just good for your creativity.

The thing about living in the 21st century is you can get to fortysomething and not have anyone major in your life die.

My Google existence is probably larger than a lot of people's.

I'm suspicious of places that look decorated. I can understand why people do it, but you see too many cushions or a piece of fabric hanging and it's, like, 'Ugh!' A good house with good art will always work, no matter what.

If you waste five minutes of time a day, over the course of a year that adds up to one full work day. Think of five wasted minutes as a slow-release holiday drug. Savour it.

I connect fashion to other peoples' elegance, but not my own. I don't think I've ever felt elegant. I've felt appropriate, but never elegant, and I wonder what that must be like. I like it when other people are elegant - I prefer it - but I can't do it myself. I honestly think it's some form of autistic disorder.

I keep vampire hours, going to bed at 2 A.M. and waking up at about 10:30-11 A.M.

I love working out how things are made, which is why I have so many models of towers.

I grew up with three brothers, so nearly everything I had was destroyed or made fun of.

I think Americans are weirdly puritanistic about psychopharmaceuticals. There are millions of people out there who would otherwise be dead or rocking by themselves in a corner who now lead full and normal lives because of amazing and wonderful scientific advances.

Books arrive in my head all at once, and then it becomes an 18-month process of getting it all down on paper.

Characters in a book are very much like personalities divvied up within a family. In the end, it all averages out to a sort of overall averageness.

For whatever reason, I tend to get reporters who are maybe in the middle of intense therapy, and they turn what's supposed to be a professional interview into therapy for themselves.

Twinkies are more natural than most TV-interview shows.