65 Quotes by Mark Leyner

One of the things about Ike that makes him so indisputably a hero is that he doesn't leave his own contradictions to the effete disputations of armchair scholars. He grapples with them himself, in his own lifetime.

But that's what nonfiction is, people. Shitty feelings and encounters with death.

So, Strand looked at me, and he said, 'You should write about all this someday.' And I said, 'You mean about all the terrible privations and wrenching traumas from my childhood?' And he said, 'Yes, it would be hilarious!' And I said, 'You mean...nonfiction?

So where does the name Adam's apple come from? Most people say that it is from the notion that this bump was caused by the forbidden fruit getting stuck in the throat of Adam in the Garden of Eden. There is a problem with this theory because some Hebrew scholars believe that the forbidden fruit was the pomegranate. The Koran claims that the forbidden fruit was a banana. So take your pick---Adam's apple, Adam's pomegranate, Adam's banana. Eve clearly chewed before swallowing.

I really think this kind of consensual cannibalism is such a perfect analogue for the reciprocal relationship between writer and reader, and especially between writers and readers of autobiography. The reader of an autobiography consumes the life of the author, and the author, in turn, consumes the life of the reader, that portion of it surrendered to reading, or listening to, the autobiography.

A person's name is a fate-conjuring incantation.

The Imaginary Intern and I used to say, 'The mind going is the mind coming,' which we meant not only in terms of the curvature of space-time (and the cosmic boomerang effect), but also in terms of sexual jouissance.

There are enigmas that we can gnaw on throughout our lives from which we derive sustenance, some kind of spiritual nourishment...I'm thinking of certain kinds of riddles and koans and philosophical conundrums, things like that...But there are also enigmas that, throughout our lives, gnaw on us.

i am estranged from most men. my american express card says simply: multicellular animal with specialized digestive cavities -- requires corrective glasses