“The person who is really in revolt is the optimist, who generally lives and dies in a desperate and suicidal effort to persuade all the other people how good they are.”

“A person, who no matter how desperate the situation, gives others hope, is a true leader.”

“A lot of people have died in the Underground, through accidents, stupidity, or suicide. All the one-unders who is dying wish had been to make other people late for work.”

“That, in essence, is the catastrophe of suicide for those who survive: not only the loss of someone, but the loss of the chance to persuade that person to act differently, the loss of the chance to connect.”

“I suppose I have found it easier to identify with the characters who verge upon hysteria, who were frightened of life, who were desperate to reach out to another person. But these seemingly fragile people are the strong people really.”

“A novelist is a person who lives in other people's skins.”

“There is no lonelier man in death, except the suicide, than that man who has lived many years with a good wife and then outlived her. If two people love each other there can be no happy end to it.”

“I don't know how people who engage in that don't commit suicide”

“As stated earlier, I am a pessimistic optimist, or what I like to call a "pissed-omist." This is a person who has lived long enough to know not to expect much from most people or life in general, but still allows him- or herself the hope that somewhere under all the horseshit there may possibly be a pony.”

“What kills a person at twenty-five? Leukemia. An accident. But George knows the better odds are that someone who passes at that age dies of unhappiness. Drug overdose. Suicide. Reckless behavior.”