The biggest mistake people make in life is trying to be someone else. They never find themselves, so they never love themselves. Instead they find somebody else who they like a lot and try to be them.
There’s something about sitting alone in the dark that reminds you how big the world really is, and how far apart we all are. The stars look like they’re so close, you could reach out and touch them. But you can’t. Sometimes things look a lot c...
And if, by the end [of this book], you reckon you might still disagree with me, then I offer you this: you'll still be wrong, but you'll be wrong with a lot more panache and flair than you could possibly manage right now.
Would you pour sand into the gas tank of your car? Of course not, your car was meant to run on good gasoline. Well, your body works the same way. Your body was meant to run on good food: fruits, vegetables, lean protein, and lots of water. Eat good f...
But when it came right down to it, the skin of my wrist looked so white and defensless that I couldn't do it. It was as if what I wanted to kill wasn't in that skin or the thin blue pulse that jumped under my thumb, but somewhere else, deeper, more s...
Fuck the lot of you and your hypocritical bullshit. You sit around spouting brotherhood. You don't know the first thing about being a brother. Or being a man. Because a real man sure as hell would never have disrespected a woman the way each and ever...
This look said I was uncomfortably near some line. Nikos had a lot of lines, all hidden. If you shot a marble in on one side of his personality, instead of coming out the other it would bounce on secret internal walls and shoot out in some unpredicta...
[Research] suggests that what we think of as free will is largely an illusion: much of the time, we are simply operating on automatic pilot, and the way we think and act – and how well we think and act on the spur of the moment – are a lot more s...
I think writers of memoirs need to be respected for the bold decision they take to bare their lives open. That alone should be enough. The things I write about, if you notice, are sensitive issues for a lot of people. If I told you my age, they would...
I'm trying to take more nothing time - and that means sacrificing doing. It's partly to do with age, partly to do with the fact that writing takes up a lot of space in your head. My ideal is to go back to when I was a child. My life is quieter than i...
I have a Ph.D. in philosophy and sports science. At 14, I went through this really tough Soviet training system. A lot of my roommates got psychologically broken or physically injured. Either you came through, or you were out. I made my Ph.D. work in...
I got a lot of problems, but I'm really good at intuiting what I need to do to be happy with whatever I create. I know when to stop myself, I know when to start, I know when to leave something alone. I guess I just kind of indulge that completely, an...
I've always had a huge fear of dying or becoming ill. The thing I'm most afraid of, though, is being alone, which I think a lot of performers fear. It's why we seek the limelight - so we're not alone, were adored. We're loved, so people want to be ar...
I learned to basically pull my own weight, just do my own thing. I spent a lot of time alone and I loved it. It was actually really great because to the present day I love spending time alone. I go bicycling alone, go climbing alone and I just love b...
I am alone a lot, which is good. I need that time to just be alone after a long day, just decompress. So, I go to either my house or the hotel, or my apartment, or whatever - wherever I am, I go home and I watch TV and I sit there, with my cat, and I...
Gwen Stefani has amazing style. I used to really love Courtney Love, and anything she wore I loved. Or Chloe Sevigny, because I really love that sort of classic look, and I like being girly and flowery, and wearing little D&G dresses. I wear hats a l...
A lot of people fear death because they think that so overwhelming an experience has to be painful, but I've seen quite a few deaths, and, with one exception, I've never known anyone to undergo anything like agony. That's amazing when you think about...
For me, the game would be to assume a very intelligent reader who can extrapolate a lot from a little. And that's become my definition of art; to get that pitch just right, where I can put a hint on page three, and the reader's ears go up a bit, as o...
For a lot of people, well-meaning teaching has made poetry seem arcane, difficult, a kind of brown-knotting medicine that might be good for you but doesn't taste so good. So I tried to make a collection of poetry that would be fun. And that would bri...
We hear a lot about identity theft when someone takes your wallet and pretends to be you and uses your credit cards. But the more serious identity theft is to get swallowed up in other people's definition of you.
I've put out a lot of little roots these two years," Anne told the moon, "and when I'm pulled up they're going to hurt a great deal. But it's best to go, I think, and, as Marilla says, there's no good reason why I shouldn't. I must get out all my amb...
