"My first semester I had only nine students. Hoping they might view me as professional and well prepared, I arrived bearing name tags fashioned in the shape of maple leaves."

"I didn't know about the rest of the class, but when Bastille Day eventually rolled around, I planned to stay home and clean my oven."

"I giggled out loud at his stupidity. If anyone knew how to make a bed, it was a faggot."

"As bad a dresser as I am, anything beats being judged by my character."

"But all of a sudden they’re poets, right, like that’s all it takes — being in love."

"Watch, hell,' Walt said. 'This is strip poker. What kind of homo wants to sit around and watch four guys get naked?"

"I can't seem to fathom that the things important to me are not important to other people as well, and so I come off sounding like a missionary, someone whose job it is to convert rather than listen."

"Nobody pours stuffing like you do, my friend."

"I've always had a way with the little people, making it a point to humor them without looking down my nose at their wasted empty lives."

"Well, that's a hell of a reason to poison yourself."

"In Japanese and Italian, the response to ["How are you?"] is "I'm fine, and you?" In German it's answered with a sigh and a slight pause, followed by "Not so good."

"It make one's mouth hurt to speak with such forced merriment."

"Clatter of a typewriter suggests that you're actually building something."

"I can't promise I'll never kill anyone again," he once said, strapping a refrigerator to his back. "It's unrealistic to live your life within such strict parameters"

"What I really hated, of course, was my mind. There must have been an off switch somewhere, but I was damned if I could find it."

"I needed to temper (my dad's) enthusiasm a bit (about attending Princeton), and so I announced that I would be majoring in patricide...My mom was actually jealous."

significant

"I find it ridiculous to assign a gender to an inanimate object incapable of disrobing and making an occasional fool of itself."

"Their house had real hardcover books in it, and you often saw them lying open on the sofa, the words still warm from being read."

"You can't brace yourself for famine if you've never known hunger."

"A zoo is a good place to make a spectacle of yourself, as the people around you have creepier, more photogenic things to look at."

"Oh, for Christ's sake,' I hear. 'Can we please just try to have a good time?' This is like ordering someone to find you attractive, and it doesn't work. I've tried it."

"Often I'd take out my magnifying glass and stare into the chaos that was her face."

"It is funny the things that run through your mind when you're sitting in your underpants in front of a pair of strangers."