In order for us [people] to progress, we need brilliance and brilliance isn't fair and it's not polite and we can't grow it. It happens. Genius happens and it doesn't always happen in a zip code where we can access it. Therefore, we kind of need [Internet] not to keep tabs on everybody but we need to give them access to everybody else.

No matter what I've written, someone somewhere has come up to me and said, "Me too." The truth can be offensive, but it's always nourishing, in a way. You recognize it. You can feel it. And even if [readers] think, "My god, I would never get in those situations," within those ridiculous circumstances that I have created for myself, they know the way I respond is probably what they would do too.

I don't believe in the concept of a soul mate. Because we are all unique, but we're also simply too similar.

I love you," she said, and I knew she meant it because she spoke the words from the heart at the center of her chest. This, at least, had not been left behind at the hospital.

Maybe it was a Patty Hearst thing. Stockholm syndrome or whatever it's called when you're being held against your will but then you become sucked in and fall in love. Or if not exactly love, you fall into something you can't see out of. 'I can't shoot a machine gun' becomes 'Hey, this hardly has any kick-back!

I could write another collection of personal essays from what has happened to me in the last year alone. I don't seek out my material - it finds me. I am magnetic, somehow.

A lot of being a writer doesn't have anything to do with writing. It's ironic - I have to squeeze the books in, even though that's what it's all about.