The kind of love that offers its life so easily, so stupidly, is always the love that is not returned.

I don't really do anything with the Internet except check my email. I have a much higher opinion of humanity because of that.

I love telling people what to read. It's my favorite thing in the world, to buy books and force books on people, take bad books away from people, give them better books.

That's the way I work. I get it all plotted in my mind, and then I write it down.

Maybe that was the definition of life everlasting: the belief that the next generation would carry your work forward.

I believe that, more than anything else, this grief of constantly having to face down our own inadequacies is what keeps people from being writers. Forgiveness, therefore, is key. I can't write the book I want to write, but I can and will write the book I am capable of writing. Again and again throughout the course of my life I will forgive myself.

Guns are dangerous and damaging even when no one gets shot. They really do loom.