Miracles do happen. You must believe this. No matter what else you believe about life, you must believe in miracles.

There's a lot about being "A Writer" that has nothing to do with writing. That's one thing I've discovered. You've got to meet with the sales force, and you've got to have all these luncheons, and be gracious, and you've got to give a lot of presentations and you've got to give a lot of speeches, and you've got to be on tour.

The most important thing for a writer to do is to write. It really doesn't matter what you write as long as you are able to write fluidly, very quickly, very effortlessly. It needs to become not second nature but really first nature to you. And read; you need to read and you need to read excellent books and then some bad books. Not as many bad books, but some bad books, so that you can see what both look like and why both are what they are.

New York City is a place where you can lock yourself up in your little studio apartment, and not go outside at all, and not feel in the slightest guilty about it.

My mother is from Cairo, Georgia. This makes everything she says sound like it went through a curling iron.

Glen had a disability more disfiguring than a burn and more terrifying than cancer. Glen had been born on the day after Christmas. "My parents just combine my birthday with Christmas, that's all," he explained. But we knew this was a lie. Glen's parents just wrapped a couple of his Christmas presents in birthday-themed wrapping paper, stuck some candles in a supermarket cake, and had a dinner of Christmas leftovers.

God, I felt certain, did not mind that I didn’t press my hands together to pray. I was casual, but I was sincere. I knew that God existed as the Correct Answer inside my chest.