Open the hood of a car and it will tell you something about the people who designed it, is just one of many phrases I’m tortured by.

All of my books come from pain.

That's how I became the damaged party boy who wandered through the wreckage, blood streaming from his nose, asking questions that never required answers. That's how I became the boy who never understood how anything worked. That's how I became the boy who wouldn't save a friend. That's how I became the boy who couldn't love the girl.

I think my sensibility is very literary; all my books were built as books, and I wasn't thinking about them being movies.

It's because you're always fighting sentiment. You're fighting sentimentality all of the time because being a mother alerts you in such a primal way.

It's like my characters, all my men are Dad and me in a mess; all my female characters are smart and hopeful, like Mom just trying to make the best of things.

Look how black the sky is, the writer said. I made it that way.