Quotes About Perspective

I like a lot of modern art. I like Chuck Close a lot. It doesn't necessarily directly influence the work I draw on the page.

As far as I'm concerned, the only difference between fact and what most people call fiction is about fifteen pages in the dictionary.

I was reading newspaper front pages from the 1930s, and I was taken aback. I'm not naive about American history, but I was a bit knocked off my feet by things that used to be on the front pages of newspapers.

Political biography is in the doldrums. No one wants to read 800 pages or so of cradle-to-grave dead politics, especially if it's familiar stuff and has all been written about before.

Usually, when I write a novel, it takes me about 100 pages to figure out the voice of the narrator.

I think, a lot of times, we find ourselves in a relationship where we are on two different pages.

If you look at the back pages of 'New York Times Magazine,' and they talk about these 6.5-million-dollar condos with a great view, like you're going to pay for a great view. Well, the top floor of the projects have a great view, too.

I only like non-fiction. After 30 pages of fiction, I think: what nonsense are they trying to write.

Half of the great comedians I've had in my shows and that I paid a lot of money to and who made my customers shriek were not only not funny to me, but I couldn't understand why they were funny to anybody.

I don't get paid like a person that everyone knows, but I get paid so much more in so many ways.

If I got paid, it was no more than five dollars a column, and I still think I was overpaid.

I was paid $8 or $9 million for 'Evan Almighty.' I didn't want that money.

You gotta love livin', baby, 'cause dyin' is a pain in the ass.

People always say time heals. Time doesn't necessarily heal anything. It allows you to manage things. There are occasions where you feel the pain as if it just happened, but you know that it's a fleeting moment.

Pain is real when you get other people to believe in it. If no one believes in it but you, your pain is madness or hysteria.

The least pain in our little finger gives us more concern and uneasiness than the destruction of millions of our fellow-beings.

Humor does not diminish the pain - it makes the space around it get bigger.

Benign envy can sound a lot like admiration. The difference is that, while admiration feels good, envy is painful.

If we talked about heartbreak more, would we feel as bad about it? Or would it kind of be more mundane in a less painful way.

I am keenly aware that in writing about my mother, I am writing about my aunts' sister, and that in writing about my grandmother, I'm writing about their mother. I know that my honesty about how my view of these people has changed over the years may be painful.

If I'm looking at life without a spiritual perspective, it's a lot more painful, a lot more confusing, and there's so much that I don't understand.

As with anything that involves emotional pain, comedy isn't too far behind. There's that element of no matter how painful something is - as long as it is not you that is going through it - it can be funny.

For me to do interviews is painful. People don't know that. To do an interview is going back in time. And to go back in time, maybe it wasn't all the time that good.

If you'd asked me when I was younger what life would be like in my 50s, I'd probably have imagined someone like my grandmother. I'd have looked like a little old lady who went for a shampoo and set every week. But it's funny - when you get to your 50s it's not like that at all because apart from a few aches and pains, I feel like I'm in my 30s.