If you start looking at movies on a moral level - "I don't like that, that hurts, that's mean, that's bad" - then I don't even want to talk to you. Or like, someone that says "I don't like science-fiction movies," or "I don't want to sit through a Western," or "I don't like violence in movies," then I completely tune out.

My pain is constant and sharp...this confession has meant nothing

I want to take you away from this," I say, motioning around the kitchen, spastic. "From sushi and elves and... STUFF.

You learn to move on without the people you love.

You don't market-research a novel; you really are writing it for yourself. It's a hobby, in many ways. The problem becomes what you do when you're confronted by criticism. You just don't listen to it.

I laugh maniacally, then take a deep breath and touch my chest- expecting a heart to be thumping quickly, impatiently, but there's nothing there, not even a beat.

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.