You’re training a new employee,' says Mrs. Clark, 'to take over your boring old job.' When you raise a child.

I spend most of my life just listening to people.

Without pain, without sacrifice we would have nothing. Like the first monkey shot into space.

I remember selling my first short story and thinking, Oh my god, I sold something for fifty dollars! That gives me the authority to say I'm a writer and to actually write more things! It legitimized the activity.

What you forget when you're planning a hijack by yourself is somewhere along the line, you might need to neglect your hostages just long enough so you can use the bathroom.

A writer's job is to cultivate what can go wrong. You're always looking for that dramatic arc of where things can fail.

We are a nation of physical animals who have forgotten how much we enjoy being that. We are cushioned by this kind of make-believe, unreal world and have no idea what we can survive because we are never challenged or tested.