I've noticed that, while I can't help but respect and sort of envy the moral nerve of people who truly do not care what others think of them, people like this also make me nervous, and I tend to do my admiring from a safe distance.

We are who people think we are.

Fiction either moves mountains or it's boring; it moves mountains or it sits on its ass.

We all suffer alone in the real world; true empathy's impossible.

It looks like you can write a minimalist piece without much bleeding. And you can. But not a good one.

A U. S. of modern A. where the State is not a team or a code, but a sort of sloppy intersection of desires and fears, where the only public consensus a boy must surrender to is the acknowledged primacy of straight-line pursuing this flat and short-sighted idea of personal happiness.

Don't be too precious about your craft... there's only 26 letters and 12 notes, and Shakespeare and Beethoven said it all better than any of us ever will