My main piece of advice would be dont worry about being published - just write a really good book, but also dont be afraid to write a bad book. Give yourself permission to fail, and dont be afraid.

It doesn't feel like a date. It doesn't feel like friendship. It feels like something that fell off the tightrope but hasn't yet hit the net.

After a while, you have to be at peace with the fact that you simple are

That's what the voices in your head are for, to get you through the silent parts.

And I find myself saying, “It wasn’t really about her.” And finding it’s true. What do you mean?” Norah asks. It was about the feeling, you know? She caused it in me, but it wasn’t about her. It was about my reaction, what I wanted to feel and then convinced myself that I felt, because I wanted it that bad. That illusion. It was love because I created it as love.

I don’t like it when you use my shampoo, because then your hair smells like me, not you.

What a horrible feeling that is, to know that if the disease [AIDS] had primarily affected PTA presidents, or priests, or white teenage girls, the epidemic would have been ended years earlier, and tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of lives would have been saved.