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" I am so sick of being exhorted, as a writer, to improve the world by representing it in a more hopeful way. "

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" If you tell your husband or boyfriend for his whole life that he needn't worry about his clothes, that he couldn't possibly understand them, that they are a woman's affair, then you can hardly complain that he doesn't have any style sense. You all make this bed. "

" I was given a thick paperback copy of the 'Guinness Book of Records' when I was 11 years old, and I read it gluttonously, cover to cover, paying special lip-smacking attention to all the incredibly gruesome chapters about the violence of human history. "

" Verisimilitude is something I am constantly seeking in fiction. I am looking for surface detail that makes something seem real. "

" Fashion has always been in conflict with convention. Style involves some knowledge of both. But you can pretty much forget these seasonal injunctions. "

" I don't see my artist friends as any more neurotic or addiction-prone than the others. The roommates I have had who were into triathlons or environmentalism were just as crazy as the poets, just as prone to tears over gardening or air conditioners, just as ready to kite a cheque or binge on cookie dough. "

" A song is a short composition for voice and instruments. It is a piece of sung poetry set to music. It is usually only a few minutes long. "

" Periods of nostalgia are impossible to predict or explain. "

" Personally, I see little distinction between an artistic mentality and criminality. You couldn't possibly create a compelling story without some wickedness or some fascination with the disgusting. Being good is a hindrance to a writer. "

" We are still vulnerable to gender-targeted marketing no matter how carefully we edit our children's bookshelves. "

" I have never, ever, not once, met a writer who said he or she would never read a mystery or a story set in some imagined future. "

" Kindle Worlds is a clever way to monetize a formerly underground trend, and to enable its participants to be remunerated. But it will be of no interest to writers with any literary ambition, as its constraints are designed to stymie even the most rudimentary impulses - even the first flickering of a dangerous originality. "

" Only a tiny portion of music history involves a singer and a lyric. Songs in music are generally thought to be a minor form. "

" If people didn't read books on the subway, underground journeys would be dreary. "

" There is something insouciant and boyish about the sockless ankle in summer. "

" Increasingly, to dismiss any popular artistic style is seen as the worst kind of snobbery. And snobbery, it goes without saying, is unacceptable in a diverse and democratic world. "

" Universities can teach maturity. They can teach teenagers how to be adults, and that means to function outside a clique or a tribe. "

" Conformism is essential to the group coherence and 'spirit.' The whole impetus behind tribalism of this kind is conservative: Belonging to the tribe is defined by opposition to other tribes. Our tribe, and its traditional ways, is superior to other tribes because it is ours. "

" All coffee shops now have WiFi. Why bring a book when you could be wittily attacking some idiot columnist on Twitter, or responding to your date requests, or posting a picture of your foot? All of that is more gripping and immediate and social than books. "

" Ah, the intractable Canadian problem: Winter and finery are basically incompatible. "

" Have you noticed the people most likely to be up in arms about governments apparently spying on us tend to be the most non-private people you know? The people launching petitions and wailing about Big Brother and data collection are most likely to be the most constant self-presenters. "

" Wear your clothes with abandon, I say; don't keep them pristine as if for museums: They are meant to wear out. Then you get to buy new ones. "

" One of the qualities essential to writing exciting stories, whether for page or screen, is an ability to abandon one's morality. We simply cannot be good writers and good people. One must be able to access one's darkest self, one's venality and pettiness and murderousness. "

" Indeed, the whole point of the man bun, I have surmised, is to assert a high proficiency at yoga. There are no yoga-achievement badges, no coloured belts like judo, so the male yoga expert needs some other kind of visible symbol. "

" I would rather be nuts than unattractive. "

" An Indian tribe is sovereign to the extent that the U.S. permits it to be sovereign. "

" The only thing that makes a book YA is that it is about teenagers, and it is written in a very conventional, non-artsy, non-pretentious way. YA is not the place for the oblique or the cryptic. If it is in any way experimental in form, it is not YA. "

" Men over 60 often think that if they wear athletic shoes - soft-soled referee shoes or hiking shoes or actual running shoes - then they will look more youthful. The contrary is true. "

" The only pleasurable part of taking the subway, as everyone will agree, is concocting elaborate fantasies about what it would be like to be married to the most interesting strangers you see there. "

" A suit is just a suit: a practical garment, not a ceremonial robe; it can be worn out to dinner with friends or for a visit to an art gallery. Its beauty and craftsmanship are utterly wasted if you think of it as something magical and symbolic. "

" I went to Queen's - a fine university with the proudly stupidest frosh week in the country. This was, when I was there, supposed to be somehow evidence of a higher social class. "