It was all in my head and now all I had to do was figure out a way to get it down on paper.

One must not be shy where language is concerned.

There was no time for kissing but she wanted him to know that in the future there would be. A kiss in so much loneliness was like a hand pulling you up out of the water, scooping you up from a place of drowning and into the reckless abundance of air. A kiss, another kiss.

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

Fiction is always really a labor.

If anybody had shown me the paperwork for how my life was going to look in five years, I would have said, "No. That is not where I want to go."

Listen she said, everything ends, every single relationship you will ever have in your lifetime is going to end.... I'll die, you'll die, you'll get tired of each other. You don't always know how it's going to happen, but it is always going to happen. So stop trying to make everything permanent, it doesn't work. I want you to go out there and find some nice man you have no intention of spending the rest of your life with. You can be very, very happy with people you aren't going to marry.