“If I could find a way to escape my destiny, do I deserve to?”

“Could it have been anyone, or was it destiny? When I’m considering this I find it helpful to quote the wisdom of my father, who once told me, “Who knows why the fuck anything happens?””

“…You'll never find someone calling A Softer World good natured. I don't think we do a completely bleak comic, but good natured just isn't a way you could ever describe it. Or my novels. Not the way I want.”

“I will not be presumptuous enough to say that my life can be a role model for anybody; but some poor child living in an obscure place in an underprivileged social setting may find a little solace in the way my destiny has been shaped. It could perhaps help such children liberate themselves from the bondage of their illusory backwardness and hopelessness.”

“I've always had to do things my way; I've gotten high my way, I've gotten clean my way, I've been in and out of relationships my way. I've taken myself to the edges of life my way. And I'm still here. Whether or not I deserve to be is another story.”

“She still cared for me, and the best way I could make amends to her was to be happy.

I do have a knack for finding great women.”

“Books were this wonderful escape for me because I could open a book and disappear into it, and that was the only way out of that house when I was a kid.”

“Every man has his destiny. But who needs to go to a fortune-teller to find it? Do I go to a chef to find out if I'm hungry?”

“I could not find my way back in dreams, I knew then. They were memory and desire, terror and hope; they told me only what I already knew.”

“I mean, I knew I wasn't a nice person, but what did I do in my past life to deserve this? I must have hit a bus full of nuns while driving a stolen car on my way to selling drugs to schoolchildren!”