The only sensible approach is not to take it too seriously. What counts is the writing.Collection: Writing
A modest critique of an age in which an actor is the President, in which fashion models are asked for their opinions, in which getting into a nightclub is seen as a significant human achievement.Collection: Fashion
Your heartbreak is just another version of the same old story.Collection: Stories
You keep thinking that with practice you will eventually get the knack of enjoying superficial encounters, that you will stop looking for the universal solvent, stop grieving. You will learn to compound happiness out of small increments of mindless pleasure.Collection: Thinking
You know, Im always surprised when I read profiles, and they make me sound so jaded. I am so not jaded.Collection: Sound
Most all of the writers I admired when I was in my teens and twenties died young. Fitzgerald lived the longest. He was 44. Dylan Thomas was 39. And then once you're approaching 40, you suddenly think, "Well, maybe I would like to live longer than Fitzgerald or Thomas."Collection: Thinking
I'd like to have the kind of house someday where a carousel horse wouldn't be out of place in the living room.Collection: Life
"Socialist" is the nastiest thing you can say about an American politician in some quarters.Collection: Politician
What I'm nostalgic for is the idea of an edge in New York. There used to be these fringes of the city where civilization sort of ended, and therefore young people could live cheaply, or open nightclubs or art galleries, or even squat. That fringe moved out to New Jersey and Brooklyn. The whole idea of the metropolis is the centralization of like-minded souls, and when the central real estate becomes too expensive, the dreamers, the young poets, and the artists will go elsewhere.Collection: Art
If it's red, French, costs too much, and tastes like the water that's left in the vase after the flowers have died and rotted, it's probably Burgundy.Collection: Flower
He insisted on a single trade secret: that you had to survive, find some quiet, and work hard every day.Collection: Hard Work
Great minds sink alike, right?Collection: Mind
Your presence here is is only a matter of conducting an experiment in limits, reminding yourself of what you aren’t.Collection: Matter
The 20th century saw far greater catastrophes than September 11th, as bad as it was, and they didn't render literature or art or music irrelevant. In fact, I think that literature and art help us to understand - sometimes they provide narratives and metaphors for understanding history, for understanding recent catastrophes.Collection: Art
The only thing worse for smoking than drinking is quitting drinking. Because then it's the only thing you can do.Collection: Drinking
Taste ... is a matter of taste (Tad Allagash)Collection: Matter
Something changed. Somewhere along the line you stopped accelerating.Collection: Lines
Delia's arms were inscribed with a grid of self- inflicted wounds, an intricate text of self-loathingCollection: Suicide
There is a shabby nobility in failing all by yourself.Collection: Failing
Tim Thornton's portrait of a pop culture obsession is so convincing that one can't help wishing that his fictional alt rock band actually existed, or suspecting that they did. The Alternative Hero is a weirdly compelling portrait of fanatic fandom which reads like High Fidelity at high volume.Collection: Hero
Yeah, 'Gossip Girl' is a good show. It's a real New York show, like 'Sex and the City.Collection: Girl