I think standardization is really the first step to something being commodified.

Writing is like sex, if it's difficult you're not doing it right.

My books do have a sort of romantic community at the end - people coming together. But on a more basic level, I always see them as being about power, in the same way that Harry Potter books are pitched to a population of young people who really have no power.

People fall so in love with their pain, they can’t leave it behind. The same as the stories they tell. We trap ourselves.

After a good-looking boy gives you rabies two, three times, you'll settle down and marry somebody less exciting for the rest of your life

Maybe humans are just the pet alligators that God flushed down the toilet.

How can you possibly believe he really loves you?” Miss Sneezy looks from the Mother to the Saint to Mr. Whittier’s hand.“You have no choice,” Mr. Whittier tells her. “If you need to be loved.