"The world of American politics is more contentious than it has ever been in my lifetime."

"Maybe humans are just the pet alligators that God flushed down the toilet."

"In 2008, while the film version of my book 'Choke' was coming to market, my mother was diagnosed with lung cancer. That meant that I had to appear in public to promote a comedy about a son trying to save his dying mother - the plot of Choke - while privately I was caring for my own dying mother. It was torture."

"Minimalism seems closest to the sophisticated storytelling of movies. Movies have really educated contemporary audiences to be the most intelligent, sophisticated audiences in history. We don't any longer need to have the relationship between one scene and the next explained. We will figure it out ourselves."

"Do not measure life by the breaths you take, but by the moments that stir your soul. In this truth lies the bedrock of all virtue — an essential principle for the reflective life."

"Well, the chairman of Federal Reserve just made his move to rescue Barack Obama. We're gonna have QE3. We're gonna print some more money."

"It's not at all uncommon for a writer to get a ton of publicity for one book and then not get as much for the next one. I don't worry about that because I try to worry about the one single part of the job I can control: the writing of the book. If I do that well, I feel, good tidings generally will follow and readers will stick with me."

"Meetings are indispensable when you don't want to do anything."