There are people we treat wrong and later, we're prepared to treat other people right.

I feel like as I've gotten older I've unfortunately come to the decision that a lot of people who seem normal and boring maybe are normal and boring.

It's different to read a book for pleasure than to read it analytically. In the past, I'd read Pride and Prejudice for pleasure. This time, I was really looking at the structure, the order of events, how the characters interact with each other and how the book is paced.

Obviously the bar is much higher now for a behavior to be scandalous. Social media has really changed the way people live. It's not a new impulse; it's just being enacted in a new way.

Perhaps fiction has, for me, served a similar purpose--what is a narrative arc if not the imposition of order on disparate events?--and perhaps it is my avid reading that has been my faith all along.

I feel like people who criticize authors for being self-promotional fail to recognize that a lot of times their ability to continue writing hinges on sales and recognition. Some of it is for fun, some of it is for ego, but a lot of it is just writers trying to ensure longevity to their career.

But I never thought of who he wasn't, I never had to explain or defend him to myself, I didn't even care what we talked about.