American dream, a spouse, a brace of children, cuddly pets, coffee-table books, rusted skeleton keys, plastic cauliflower bags, business cards of business-card printers, a mound of used airmail envelopes. Old house on moving day, all echoes and loneliness.

— Brian D'Ambrosio

Creativity is always a leap of faith. Writers sit down in front of empty pages. Painters stare before blank easels. Thespians rehearse looking toward empty stages. Creativity is experimental by nature.

— Brian D'Ambrosio

Happiness is a habit, it’s more than fleeting, more than a disintegrating lozenge.

— Brian D'Ambrosio

I never trust a man who tucks in his shirt by choice or neglects coffee in favor of tea.

— Brian D'Ambrosio

Life is calmness with squabbling, accumulating traditions and self-consciousness. Elaborate meals, medicine, law, pretty pictures unspoiled, rocking the cradle and holding the hammer, impressive skies of gray and blue, believing in what we can’t settle, the mystery of iniquity, the absolutely sincere predictions of fools, lighter moods like these.

— Brian D'Ambrosio

Life, perhaps less a document than an impression, conveyed through partial glances, stream-of-consciousness juxtapositions, unpredictable rhythms, a collage of sound, a conscientious diarist, a career of blackmail and scandal culminated in murder, a blind man with a will of iron and a nervous system of gossamer.

— Brian D'Ambrosio

One thing that unites triumphant entrepreneurs, whether in Brooklyn, San Francisco or Great Falls, Montana, is strength of character. Individuality is the goal that we all strive to excel at in some way; the notion that we are distinct, special, that there is something teachable about our wisdom, something remarkable about our outlook.

— Brian D'Ambrosio

On the perfect night there is nothing more transcendent or terrifying than boxing. It's the ultimate representation of the guilty pleasure.

— Brian D'Ambrosio

Rum is tonic that clarifies the vision, and sets things in true perspective.

— Brian D'Ambrosio

The lonely, wistful revisionism of memories is as gratingly repetitive as snow and ice in Canada. I avoid them both at all costs - memories and Canada.

— Brian D'Ambrosio