“It's a funny thing… but people mostly have it backward. They think they live by what they want. But really, what guides them is what they're afraid of. What they don't want.”

“The burden of originality is one that most people don't want to accept. They'd rather sit in front of the TV and let that tell them what they're supposed to like, what they're supposed to buy, and what they're supposed to laugh at.”

“What she mostly wanted, he learned, was the same thing many people want--someone to notice she was there.”

“That's what people do. Kill the things they're afraid of.”

“People who have what they want are fond of telling people who haven’t what they want that they really don’t want it.”

“A lot of people get so hung up on what they can't have that they don't think for a second about whether they really want it.”

“The Republican establishment has decided they don't want any part of conservatism, and this is really not new. People surprise to hear this. But the republican party formative event of conservativism is Goldwater's landslide defeat. That's what they think of when they think "conservative". They don't think Reagan. They think Goldwater. They believe what the inside-the-Beltway philosophy is about conservatives: they're racist, sexist, bigot, homophobe, Southern hayseed hicks. They're pro-lifers, they're embarrassing to have to go to convention with them, and they're just embarrassed to have those kind of people in the party.”

“What is my life for and what am I going to do with it? I don't know and I'm afraid. I can never read all the books I want; I can never be all the people I want and live all the lives I want.”

“I don't want to know about my biggest idols. I don't want to read their autobiographies, I don't want to find out what they're really like.”

“I think the important thing is maybe allow the fans to see what they want to see. We don't want to put anyone into a corner where it's like—So other people feel like they're not represented.”