Every success story can be told as a series of failures.

Everything has to be paid for, especially money.

I don’t love writing; I love having a problem I believe I might someday write my way out of.

Respect the one-hit wonder not for his one hit but for all the days he must have suffered afterward, trying for another.

Think of this as a short book composed entirely of what I hoped would be a long book’s quotable passages.

It can be worth forgoing marriage for sex, and it can be worth forgoing sex for marriage. It can be worth forgoing parenthood for work, and it can be worth forgoing work for parenthood. Every case is orthogonal to all the others. That’s the entire problem.

The first beautiful songs you hear tend to stay beautiful because better than beauty, which is everywhere, is the memory of first discovering beauty.

Everything has to be paid for, especially money.

There are two kinds of people: those who can’t perform the act when they’re sad and those who perform it only to escape sadness. I have a theory that the second kind of person lives longer.