I started writing when I was twenty, and my first book came out seventeen years later.

I felt uncomfortable calling myself a writer until I started with 'The New Yorker,' and then I was like, 'Okay, now you can call yourself that.

I hate you' she said to me one afternoon. 'I really, really hate you.' Call me sensitive, but I couldn't help but take it personally.

This left me alone to solve the coffee problem - a sort of catch-22, as in order to think straight I need caffeine, and in order to make that happen I need to think straight.

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

Most people would have found it grotesque, but when you're in love nothing is so abstract or horrible that it can't be thought of as cute.

I always think it's a good policy to like the people who like you.

I just looked at the pattern of my life, decided I didn't like it, and changed.

We can't profess love without talking through hand puppets.

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.

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.

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

Boys who spent their weekends making banana nut muffins did not, as a rule, excel in the art of hand-to-hand combat.

A good [short story] would take me out of myself and then stuff me back in, outsized, now, and uneasy with the fit.

If you stepped out of the shower and saw a leprechaun standing at the base of your toilet, would you scream, or would you innately understand that he meant you no harm?

Like all of my friends, she's a lousy judge of character.

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

We were not a hugging people. In terms of emotional comfort it was our belief that no amount of physical contact could match the healing powers of a well made cocktail.

If you aren't cute, you may as well be clever.