If I can't be beautiful, I want to be invisible.

I often need physical gesture to balance dialogue. If I write in public, every time I need to know what a character is doing with his hand or foot, I can look up and study people and find compelling gestures that I can harvest. Writing in public gives you that access to a junkyard of details all around you.

The weather today is an increasing trend towards denial.

Ultimately, everyone is acting out of what they feel is the best choice. In a way, they're all trying to improve the world. And I think that those basic choices make the world a better place.

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.

I wish I had the courage not to fight and doubt everything... I wish, just once, I could say, 'This. This is good enough. Just because I choose it.

As a lower-class kid, I was raised to think success would be owning stuff. Having that great job, too. Now I find my parents' dream was wrong. You never really own anything. And you're never really finished as a person.