I read everything of Ray Bradbury when I was 12 or 13, and I think that's the most effective time to read Bradbury. He built such a moral world, where you have to make decisions and grow up.

Every time I finish a book, I forget everything I learned writing it - the information just disappears out of my head

Burn me. Drown me. Tell me lies. I will still be who I am.

I wasn't good company, that was true, and people avoided me, but that was all right. I was too busy dreaming.

I know who you are in your heart,' Andres said. 'That's all that matters.' And that was it. That was the moment. Now I knew how I would feel if I ever lost him. That was how you knew love. My mother had told me that. All you had to do was imagine your life without the other person, and if the thought alone made you shiver, then you knew.

I read "The Group" by Mary McCarthy. It had tons of sex in it, or so I thought at the time.

He started to look at me in a manner I recognized: it was the way I looked at a new book, one I had never read before, one that surprised me with all it had to say.