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.

With the novels, I usually start from something in my own life that I can't resolve, so I turn it into a metaphor and for months or sometimes years I'll exhaust all of my emotional reaction to this issue by making it enormous on the page.

Our purest form of joy comes when people we envy get hurt. That most genuine form of joy.

The lower you fall, the higher you'll fly. The farther you run, the more God wants you back.

How folks lay claim to a loved one is they give you a name of their own. They figure to label you as their property.

Kids grow up connected to nothing these days, plugged in and living lives boosted to them from other people.

You can't base your life on the past or the present. You have to tell me about your future.