"Every gathering has its moment. As an adult, I distract myself by trying to identify it, dreading the inevitable downswing that is sure to follow. The guests will repeat themselves one too many times, or you'll run out of dope or liquor and realize that it was all you ever had in common."

"Faced with an exciting question, science tended to provide the dullest possible answer."

"The things I've bought from strangers in the dark would curl your hair."

"In Japanese and Italian, the response to ['How are you?'] is 'I'm fine, and you?' In German it's answered with a sigh and a slight pause, followed by 'Not so good."

"It's safe to assume that by 2085 guns will be sold in vending machines but you won't be able to smoke anywhere in America."

"If you read someone else's diary, you get what you deserve."

"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."

"Like any normal fifth grader, I preferred my villains to be evil and stay that way, to act like Dracula rather than Frankenstein's monster, who ruined everything by handing that peasant girl a flower. He sort of made up for it by drowning her a few minutes later, but, still, you couldn't look at him the same way again."

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

"It's not lost on me that I'm so busy recording life, I don't have time to really live it."

"Everyone looks retarded once you set your mind to it."

"I'm dating myself, but this was before Jesus Christ. We worshiped a God named Sashatiba, who had five eyes, including one on the Adam's apple."

"Owl love you forever."

"At the end of a miserable day, instead of grieving my virtual nothing, I can always look at my loaded wastepaper basket and tell myself that if I failed, at least I took a few trees down with me."

"He die one day, and then he go above of my head to live with your father.'He weared the long hair, and after he died, the first day he come back here for to say hello to the peoples.'He nice, the Jesus."

"It was one of those situations I often find myself in while traveling. Something's said by a stranger I've been randomly thrown into contact with, and I want to say, 'Listen. I'm with you on most of this, but before we continue, I need to know who you voted for in the last election."

"My family isn't really all that different from anyone else's. Well, maybe they're a bit more entertaining."

"It's odd the things that people remember. Parents will arrange a birthday party, certain it will stick in your mind forever. You'll have a nice time, then two years later you'll be like, 'There was a pony there? Really? And a clown with one leg?'"

"For as long as I can remember, my father saved. He saves money, he saves disfigured sticks that resemble disfigured celebrities, and most of all, he saves food. Cherry tomatoes, sausage biscuits, the olives plucked from other people's martinis --he hides these things in strange places until they are rotten. And then he eats them."

"I'm the most important person in the lives of almost everyone I know and a good number of the people I've never even met."

"The way I saw it, if my students were willing to pretend I was a teacher, the least I could do was return the favor and pretend that they were writers."

"Adrienne started teaching a few months ago in Denver and wrote that it leaves you with a constant feeling of deceiving people. That you know nothing they don't, or couldn't learn on their own if they cared to."

"He has a passport,' my classmates would whisper. 'Quick, let's run before he judges us!"

"I look at these people and can't quite believe that they exist. Are they professional actors? I wonder. Or are they simply laymen who want a lot of attention? To put them in perspective, I think of being on an airplane. The flight attendant comes down the aisle with her food cart and, eventually, parks it beside my seat. 'Can I interest you in the chicken?' she asks. 'Or would you prefer the platter of shit with bits of broken glass in it? To be undecided in this election is to pause for a moment and then ask how the chicken is cooked."

"They were nothing like the French people I had imagined. If anything, they were too kind, too generous and too knowledgable in the fields of plumbing and electricity."

"In New York I'd go to the movies three or four times a week. Here I've upped it to six or seven, mainly because I'm too lazy to do anything else. Fortunately, going to the movies seems to suddenly qualify as an intellectual accomplishment, on a par with reading a book or devoting time to serious thought. It's not that the movies have gotten any more strenuous, it's just that a lot of people are as lazy as I am, and together we've agreed to lower the bar."

"Every day we're told that we live in the greatest country on earth. And it's always stated as an undeniable fact: Leos are born between July 23 and August 22, fitted queen-size sheets measure sixty by eighty inches, and America is the greatest country on earth. Having grown up with this in our ears, it's startling to realize that other countries have nationalistic slogans of their own, none of which are 'We're number two!"

"Mr. Mancini had a singular talent for making me uncomfortable. He forced me to consider things I'd rather not think about " the sex of my guitar, for instance. If I honestly wanted to put my hands on a woman, would that automatically mean I could play? Gretchen's teacher never told her to think of her piano as a boy. Neither did Lisa's flute teacher, though in that case the analogy was obvious. On the off chance that sexual desire was all it took, I steered clear of Lisa's instrument, fearing that I might be labeled a prodigy."

"Speed eliminates all doubt. Am I smart enough? Will people like me? Do I really look all right in this plastic jumpsuit?"

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

"My conscience is crosswired with my sweat glands, but there's a short in the system and I break out over things I didn't do, which only makes me look more suspect."

"My mother was, for the most part, delighted with my brother and regarded him with the bemused curiosity of a brood hen discovering she has hatched a completely different species. 'I think it was very nice of Paul to give me this vase,' she once said, arranging a bouquet of wildflowers into the skull-shaped bong my brother had left on the kitchen table. 'It's nontraditional, but that's the Rooster's way. He's a free spirit, and we're lucky to have him."

"The woman spoke with a heavy western North Carolina accent, which I used to discredit her authority. Here was a person for whom the word 'pen' had two syllables. He people undoubtedly drank from clay jugs and hollered for Paw when the vittles were ready-- so who was she to advise me on anything?"

"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."

"I'd tried to straighten him out, but there's only so much you can do for a person who thinks Auschwitz is a brand of beer."

"On a busy day twenty-two thousand people come to visit Santa, and I was told that it is an elf's lot to remain merry in the face of torment and adversity. I promised to keep that in mind."

"Back in New York I took full advantage of my status as a native speaker. I ran my mouth to shop clerks and listened in on private conversations, realising I'd gone an entire month without hearing anyone complaint that they were 'stressed out."

"It bothered me that the bag bothered me more than head did, but what are you going to do? A person doesn't conciously choose what he focuses on. Those things choose you, and, once they do, nothing, it seems, can shake them."

"The rabbit of Easter. He bring of the chocolate."

"The houses looked like something a child might draw, a row of shaky squares with triangles on top. Add a door, add two windows. Think of putting a tree in the front yard, and then decide against it because branches aren't worth the trouble."

"My hands tend to be full enough dealing with people who hate me for who I am. Concentrate too hard on the millions of people who hate you for what you are and you're likely to turn into one of those unkempt, sloppy dressers who sag beneath the weight of the two hundred political buttons they wear pinned to their coats and knapsacks."

"If some people are 'outed, are other people 'inned? Can we say that someone has been 'besided or 'overed?"

"I haven't got the slightest idea how to change people, but still I keep a long list of prospective candidates just in case I should ever figure it out."

"He's as nutty as a vegan T-bone."

"It was my friend Frank, a writer in San Francisco, who finally set me straight. When asked about my new look he put down his fork and stared at me for a few moments. 'A bow tie announces to the world you can no longer get an erection."

"The landscape is best described as 'pedestrian hostile.' It's pointless to try to take a walk, so I generally just stay in the room and think about shooting myself in the head."

"I've become like one of those people I hate, the sort who go to the museum and, instead of looking at the magnificent Brueghel, take a picture of it, reducing it from art to proof. It's not 'Look what Brueghel did, painted this masterpiece' but 'Look what I did, went to Rotterdam and stood in front of a Brueghel painting!"

"Certain motherfuckers think they can fuck with my shit, but you can't kill the Rooster. You might can fuck him up some times, but, bitch, nobody kills the motherfucking Rooster. You know what I'm saying?"

"Hugh consoled me, saying, 'Don't let it get to you. There are plenty of things you're good at.'When asked for some examples, he listed vacuuming and naming stuffed animals. He says he can probably come up with a few more, but he'll need some time to think."

"The guilt applies only to those things that are being given away for free."