If you don’t write the book you have to write, everything breaks.

It annoys the hell out of me when people say, This is the kitchen, and this is the bathroom. What am I, Helen Keller? I mean, it's pretty obvious when you're in a kitchen and when you're not.

I liked the fact she understood how we all have little secret habits that seem normal enough to us, but which we know better than to mention out loud.

Birthday parties make me nervous as hell. They're one of those things where you're forced to be happy. And even if you're totally depressed, you're got to pretend you're glad you were born, regardless of the fact that getting older means you're closer to dying.

I am very interested in loyalty, even if the person to whom one is loyal is flawed, criminal, or otherwise in the wrong.

My mind leaps to my theory about presidents - that there are two kinds, ones who have a lot of sex and the others who start wars. In short - and don't quote me, because this is an incomplete expression of a more complex premise - I believe blow jobs prevent war.

I'm very interested in compassion - compassion for oneself and others. I write about very complicated characters and experiences and try to do it without judging the character or the action.