“Just because life is hard and always ends in a bad way doesn't mean that all stories have to. Even if that's what they tell us in school and the New York Book Review.”

“What's the good news?
-Pardon?
-You said the bad news is we're going the wrong way.
-There isn't any good news. Just because there's bad news doesn't mean there's good news, too.”

“Thus I rediscovered what writers have always known (and have told us again and again): books always speak of other books, and every story tells a story that has already been told.”

“Just because a relationship ends, it doesn't mean it's not worth having.”

“I tell you, I'd be lucky to hit.280 in New York. There are too many people in New York, and if you don't want to be a bad guy, you must go to all the dinners and meetings. How could I concentrate on baseball? I have so many good friends in New York that it is hard to turn them down. But it is that way every place on the road. I tell the hotel that I will not be disturb, [sic] but people find me anyway.”

“Just because I don't do bad things doesn't mean I don't have bad thoughts.”

“Just because it's a bad job doesn't mean I need to do it badly.”

“There's a hunger for stories in all of us, adults too. We need stories so much that we're even willing to read bad books to get them, if the good books won't supply them.”

“Just because life is inelegant doesn't mean we have to behave likewise.”

“Unreliable Memoirs was just too hard to classify: most of the first wave of American reviewers had convicted it of trying to be truthful and fanciful at the same time. Since I had clearly had no other aim in mind, I read these indictments with sad bewilderment. The most powerful reviewer, in The New York Review of Books, had seized on my incidental remark 'Rilke was a prick' in order to instruct me that Rilke was, on the contrary, an important German poet.”