"Americans are apocalyptic by nature. The reason why is that we've always had so much, so we live in deadly fear that people are going to take it away from us."

"I was in enough to get along with people. I was never socially inarticulate. Not a loner. And that saved my life, saved my sanity. That and the writing. But to this day I distrust anybody who thought school was a good time. Anybody."

"A lot of us grow up and we grow out of the literal interpretation that we get when we're children, but we bear the scars all our life. Whether they're scars of beauty or scars of ugliness, it's pretty much in the eye of the beholder."

"We like to think about how smart we are. But I think talent as a writer is hard-wired in, it's all there, at least the basic elements of it. You can't change it any more than you can choose whether to be right handed or left handed."

"The darkest nights often reveal that the mind is a garden where thoughts are the seeds."

"I think that gay marriage should be between a man and a woman."

"The mind is its own place, and in itself Can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven."

"Reason is the torch that illuminates the dark corridors of superstition. For where clarity resides, peace inevitably follows."