"As a child I assumed that when I reached adulthood, I would have grown-up thoughts."

"Writing gives you the illusion of control, and then you realize it's just an illusion, that people are going to bring their own stuff into it."

"I love things made out of animals. It's just so funny to think of someone saying, "I need a letter opener. I guess I'll have to kill a deer."

"The Korean man nodded, the way you do when you’re a foreigner and understand that someone has finished a sentence."

"All I do is lie, and that has made me immune to compliments."

"It's safe to assume that by 2085 guns will be sold in vending machines but you won't be able to smoke anywhere in America."

"The rabbit of Easter. He bring of the chocolate."

"Weird doors open. People fall into things."

"He looked as though his life had not only passed him by but paused along the way to spit in his face."

"On a busy day twenty-two thousand people come to visit Santa, and I was told that it is an elf's lot to remain merry in the face of torment and adversity. I promised to keep that in mind."

"Being locked up is one thing, but to have no concept of confinement, to be ignorant of its terms and never understand that struggle is useless - that's what hell must be like."

"It is funny the things that run through your mind when you're sitting in your underpants in front of a pair of strangers."

"Often I'd take out my magnifying glass and stare into the chaos that was her face."

"Oh, for Christ's sake,' I hear. 'Can we please just try to have a good time?' This is like ordering someone to find you attractive, and it doesn't work. I've tried it."

"A zoo is a good place to make a spectacle of yourself, as the people around you have creepier, more photogenic things to look at."

"You can't brace yourself for famine if you've never known hunger."

"Their house had real hardcover books in it, and you often saw them lying open on the sofa, the words still warm from being read."

"I find it ridiculous to assign a gender to an inanimate object incapable of disrobing and making an occasional fool of itself."

significant

"Whenever I read a passage that moves me, I transcribe it in my diary, hoping my fingers might learn what excellence feels like."

"College is the best thing that can ever happen to you," my father used to say, and he was right, for it was there that I discovered drugs, drinking, and smoking.."

"And when Hugh would grow progressively Gandhi on me, I'd remind him that these were pests---disease carriers who feasted upon the dead and then came indoors to dance upon our silverware."

"Thanks stadium pal!"

"At first, writing for The New Yorker was very scary to me. I couldn't imagine anything that I would write in that typeface."

"Say what you will about the south, but in North Carolina a hot dog is free to swing anyway it wishes."

"There is still the outside world to contend with. A world of backfiring cars, and their human equivalents."

"In other parts of the country people tried to stay together for the sake of the children. In New York they tried to work things out for the sake of the apartment."

"People are often frightened of Parisians, but an American in Paris will find no harsher critic than another American."

"I needed to temper (my dad's) enthusiasm a bit (about attending Princeton), and so I announced that I would be majoring in patricide...My mom was actually jealous."

"I was just struggling with my inner vachette and pondering the depths of my own inhumanity."

"But I have no mind for business and considered staying awake to be enough of an accomplishment."

"Given enough time, I guess anything can look good. All it has to do is survive."

"This was the consequence of seeing too much and understanding the horrible truth: No one is safe. The world is not manageable."

"I'd always thought that I understood this, but lately I realize that what I call "understanding" is basically just fantasizing."

"I was a smart-ass, born and raised. This had been my curse and would continue to be so."

"She took pictures of germs, viruses, and people reacting to germs and viruses. On weekends, for extra money, she photographed weddings, which really wasn't that much of a stretch"

"Remember that the most important thing is to try and love other people as much as they love you."

"There seemed to be some correlation between devotion to God and a misguided zeal for marshmallows."

"There's a reason regular people don't appear on TV: we're boring."

"What I really hated, of course, was my mind. There must have been an off switch somewhere, but I was damned if I could find it."

"I can't promise I'll never kill anyone again," he once said, strapping a refrigerator to his back. "It's unrealistic to live your life within such strict parameters"

"Clatter of a typewriter suggests that you're actually building something."

"It make one's mouth hurt to speak with such forced merriment."

"In Japanese and Italian, the response to ["How are you?"] is "I'm fine, and you?" In German it's answered with a sigh and a slight pause, followed by "Not so good."

"Well, that's a hell of a reason to poison yourself."

"I've always had a way with the little people, making it a point to humor them without looking down my nose at their wasted empty lives."

"Nobody pours stuffing like you do, my friend."

"I can't seem to fathom that the things important to me are not important to other people as well, and so I come off sounding like a missionary, someone whose job it is to convert rather than listen."

"Watch, hell,' Walt said. 'This is strip poker. What kind of homo wants to sit around and watch four guys get naked?"

"But all of a sudden they’re poets, right, like that’s all it takes — being in love."