Even if you tell yourself "Today I'm going to drink coffee the wrong way ... from a dirty boot." Even that would be right, because you chose to drink coffee from that boot. Because you can do nothing wrong. You are always right. Even when you say, "I'm such an idiot, I'm so wrong..." you're right. You're right about being wrong. You're right even when you're an idiot. No matter how stupid your idea, you're doomed to be right because it's yours.

Some of the best ideas I get seem to happen when I'm doing mindless manual labor or exercise. I'm not sure how that happens, but it leaves me free for remarkable ideas to occur.

Everyone holds a certain type of power. For young people, it's their youth, their attractiveness, and their energy. But they're terrified that as those qualities fade, what are they going to replace that form of power with?

I have a secret goal with my editor - he has asthma and uses his inhaler, and after I send him a new manuscript, I'll have his assistant phone me and tell me how many times he had to get his inhaler out while reading a draft. It's my secret laugh meter.

There are worse things you can do to people you love than kill them.

When both of you are beautiful, neither of you is beautiful. Together, as a couple, you're less than the sum of your parts.

My writing has to excite people and depict or include their experiences. That's part of my process - to go out and interact with people. It's very much like an archival process. I understand that the Brothers Grimm would go out and get people talking so they could document folk tales that weren't being documented any other way. I try to offer a little bit of myself - some experience from my life that evokes stories in other people.