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

I'm not sure what we're running from. Nobody. Or the future. Fate. Growing up. Getting old. Picking up the pieces. As if running we won't have to get on with our lives.

I've met God across his long walnut desk with his diplomas hanging on the wall behind him, and God asks me, 'Why?' Why did I cause so much pain? Didn't I realize that each of us is a sacred, unique snowflake of special unique specialness? Can't I see how we're all manifestations of love? I look at God behind his desk, taking notes on a pad, but God's got this all wrong. We are not special. We are not crap or trash, either. We just are. We just are, and what happens just happens. And God says, 'No, that's not right.' Yeah. Well. Whatever. You can't teach God anything.

It's all mirror, mirror on the wall because beauty is power the same way money is power the same way a gun is power.

We've been speaking English as a second language so long that we've forgotten it as our first.

The girl traced the outline of her lover's shadow so she would always have a record of how he looked.

The amazing miracle of death, when one second you're walking and talking, and the next second you're an object.