Most times, it's just a lot easier not to let the world know what's wrong.

When you're thinking about the rest of your life, you're never really thinking more than a couple years down the road.

It's not enough to be numbered with the grains of sand on the beach and the stars in the sky.

With my eyes closed, I ask if she knows how this will all turn out. "Long-term or short-term?" she asks. Both. "Long-term," she says, "we're all going to die. Then our bodies will rot. No surprise there. Short-term, we're going to live happily ever after." Really? "Really," she says. "So don't sweat it.

Ideas come at any moment -- except when you demand them. Most ideas come while I'm physically active, at the gym, with friends, gardening, so I always carry pen and paper. My first draft is always written in longhand. But once the first dozen chapters, more like short stories, are written, then momentum builds until I can't leave the project until it's done.

You have no idea what it is like to constantly disappoint people. You see it the moment you meet them. You see in their eyes that they expected something so entirely different, and here they are meeting you.

Brandy is so attractive you could chop her head off and put it on blue velvet in the window at Tiffany's and somebody would buy it for a million dollars.