“But why is it that if you imagine a baby who smells of milk, for example, you can't help smiling? Why is there such an agreement around the world about what is or isn't a foul smell? Who decided wh...”

“But what I did sense was an emptiness like a black hole inside of him, and there was no predicting what might emerge from a place like that.”

“After listening to a lot of these stories, I began to think that American loneliness is a completely different creature from anything we experience in this country, and it made me glad I was born J...”

“That was with me for years--feeling I wasn't myself. And I do think I wasn't my real self then. Of course, I'm not sure there is such a thing as a real self. You could ransack your innards looking ...”

“You don't know what cold is until you've experienced the cold you feel when the blood is draining out of your body.”

“When you're in an extreme situation you tend to avoid facing it by getting caught up in little details. Like a guy who's decided to commit suicide and boards a train only to become obsessed with wh...”

“There is beauty in truth, even if it's painful. Those who lie, twist life so that it looks tasty to the lazy, brilliant to the ignorant, and powerful to the weak. But lies only strengthen our defec...”

“One lie has the power to tarnish a thousand truths.”

“Don't lies eventually lead to the truth? And don't all my stories, true or false, tend toward the same conclusion? Don't they all have the same meaning? So what does it matter whether they are true...”

“Above all, don't lie to yourself. The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to a point that he cannot distinguish the truth within him, or around him, and so loses all respect fo...”

“Of all the bright cruel lies they tell you, the cruelest is the one called love.”

“Don't cry, I'm sorry to have deceived you so much, but that's how life is.”