In my experience, ghosts are made up only of the living, people you know are out there but are forever out of range

Imagine a world in which no writer has written a literary novel in sixty years. Imagine a place where not a single person has read a book that is truly about the character at its center.

The darkness inside your head is something your imagination fills with stories that have nothing to do with the real darkness around you.

A good story feels both surprising and inevitable, fresh and familiar.

Writing is hard work, and if anything's true about the process, it's that fact that a good story is hard to find and even trickier to get on paper. What's less romantic than staring alone at a blank screen? And edgy? I've changed the cat little because I didn't know what my characters were going to say next.

"A name isn't a person." Ga said. "Don't ever remember someone by their name. To keep someone alive, you put them inside you, you put their face on your heart. Then, no matter where you are, they're always with you because they're a part of you."

All the lessons you need to learn in life, he said, will be taught to you by your enemy.