When I read Jerome D. Salinger's "The Catcher in the Rye" that was the first time I felt my mind blow open. I thought that book was speaking to me. I was 12 or 13 when I read that. I read everything on my mother's bookshelves.

The sky is already purple; the first few stars have appeared, suddenly, as if someone had thrown a handful of silver across the edge of the world.

He believed in dreams, in endings that people told you could never happen, in disappointments reversed and luck that lasted.

My sorrow is I used to read all the time and now, as a writer, I don't have the time to read.

What I like about fairy tales is the language and the matter-of-fact way of introducing magic, where it's accepted that a fox could talk or a gate could just appear in a wall. I think fairy tales are so psychological.

That's the way love sounds, my mother told me. You think it should feel like honey, but instead it cuts like a knife.

Crying wasn't like riding a bike. Give it up, and you quickly forget how it's done.