People always write on my Facebook that they've seen somebody they thought was me on the subway, and I was cursing badly.

My mother cranes her neck. Her ability to be fascinated by things is her best gift to me.

That's what I always liked about science fiction - you can make the world end. Humour is my multiple warhead delivery system.

I always think that good writers should be growing up on the brink of death - it really lets them see mortality very clearly.

Summer is a Latvian chicken. We make foolish choices. We think we’re young again. We run with outstretched arms toward an object of love and it pecks us and pecks us until we’re standing there snot-nosed and teary in the middle of Astor Place and the sun sets fire to our Penguin shirts and all that is left to do is go to our air-conditioned homes and ponder the cruelty of our finest season.

I don't have many possessions, apart from my books.

... I'm the fortieth-ugliest man in this bar. But so what! So what! What if someday she lets me kiss each one of her freckles again? She has like a million. But every one of them means something to me. Isn't this how people used to fall in love? I know we're living in Rubenstein's America, like you keep saying. But doesn't that just make us even more responsible for each other's fates? I mean, what if Eunice and I just said no to all this. To this bar. To this FACing. The two of us. What if we just went home and read books to each other?