Literature is about getting in touch. It sounds so hippie, but it really is about sharing stuff. We are a community that doesn't seem to be important for the rest of society, but we are people who want to get in touch - really in touch. We want to be thinking together.

The stories on standardized tests don't have one author, therefore they can never authentically be in the first person. Imagine that! Everywhere, there are these tests that have been written by multiple people.

Everything has been said and everything has been done, but you still feel like you are looking for something.

I was a nerdy kid and I was writing and showing other fellows who are still my friends what I was writing. We were sharing that and kept sharing it. The experiences they had were so different than mine.

I knew little, but at least I knew that: no one could speak for someone else. That although we might want to tell other people's stories, we always end up telling our own.

Publishing my book is like giving it away. At first you start talking about it, but you are basically letting go. I won't say it's like giving birth because I haven't given birth. It's more like when your children leave home.

When you read a novel, you know what to expect because you've been reading novels for a long time.