“Writers are liars trying to come clean. That’s why the best ones are the most tragic.”

“Writers are liars trying to come clean. That’s why the best ones are the most tragic.”

“To conceive of a god in one’s image is already quite a feat for inflated egos. To imagine, however, that this likeness has chosen your generation amongst the thousands for ending the party is to bring the egocentrism to new heights.”

“There is nothing wrong with being fascinated by the dark side of life, and ourselves, but woe to those who think this is representative of reality. All too many of us sit in our homes watching TV, falling prey to the delusion that the world is getting worse. If these sorry individuals spent more time meeting their neighbors, they’d discover that 95% of their peers are fine people.”

“Words are a means to an end. Those who chase after them inevitably fail to reach that end.”

“Nothing distresses the civilized person like unfettered nature. The Grand Canyon seen from behind the railing is indeed a splendid sight, but as soon as the desert reclaims your golf course that is another matter altogether.”

“We would like to think of death as a release from the pressures of existence, but this is a fatally mistaken thought: it is the ultimate culmination of those pressures.”

“It’s not words, but years we should be editing. Remember: time spent on bad art is a form of redundancy, doing the same thing twice is a form of tautology, and wasting precious moments complaining about life is a form of pleonasm. We should all learn to live our lives concisely.”

“Contemplation and writing demand solitude, which leads to a sorry feeling of isolation and detachment. Writers try to call their loneliness genius, and the world believes them most of the time.”

“If one chews a problem over long enough, it becomes apparent that the jaw is aching, and what started as weighing heavy on the heart ends up a pain in the neck.”

“Reflection is nothing more than what it sounds, and pondering one’s own life is about as productive as talking to one’s image in a mirror: both acts are egocentric and neither produces a dialog. People who talk to themselves in public are not self-actualized; they're crazy.”

“Writers are liars trying to come clean. That’s why the best ones are the most tragic.”