You can only hold a smile for so long, after that it's just teeth.

"Getting fired," Tyler says, "is the best thing that could happen to any of us. That way, we’d quit treading water and do something with our lives."

In a city this size, every year, hundreds of husbands walk away. Kids leave home. Wives escape. People disappear.

People fall so in love with their pain, they can’t leave it behind. The same as the stories they tell. We trap ourselves.

If you can change the way people think. The way they see themselves. The way they see the world. If you do that, you can change the way people live their lives. That's the only lasting thing you can create.

No, none of us seem so very real. We're only supporting characters in the lives of each other. Any real truth, any precious fact will always be lost in a mountain of shattered make-believe.

What I'm always trying to do with every book is to recreate the effect of the stories we heard as children in front of campfires and fireplaces - the ghost stories that engaged us.