Even though I didn't know I was applying for the job, I have somehow become the spokesperson for independent book stores.

You can't be a jerk in order to be a good writer.

Reading fiction is important. It is a vital means of imagining a life other than our own, which in turn makes us more empathetic beings.

Do you want to do this thing? Sit down and do it. Are you not writing? Keep sitting there. Does it not feel right? Keep sitting there. Think of yourself as a monk walking the path to enlightenment. Think of yourself as a high school senior wanting to be a neurosurgeon. Is it possible? Yes. Is there some shortcut? Not one I've found. Writing is a miserable, awful business. Stay with it. It is better than anything in the world.

I could teach. I could wait tables. I could cook in a restaurant. Food and teaching were the two skills I had.

I am the person who is appropriating stories that are not mine and turning them into a book.

There was such an incredible logic to kissing, such a metal-to-magnet pull between two people that it was a wonder that they found the strength to prevent themselves from succumbing every second. Rightfully, the world should be a whirlpool of kissing into which we sank and never found the strength to rise up again.