What a generous thing that is, I realize, for a husband to try to make his wife laugh.

People focus on the darker female characters in my books, but for every one of those, I can also show you an equally screwed up man that no one ever comments about, or a nicer woman that no one comments about.

Love makes you want to be a better man. But maybe love, real love, also gives you permission to just be the man you are.

I'm all for whatever transitions the book properly to a movie.

I grew up in the '80s where there's a lot of these kind of post-apocalyptic, post-comet, post-whatever it was, so that always captured my imagination a lot as a little kid, that idea of getting access to secret places and being able to roam around where you're not supposed to.

I've always been partial to the image of liquor as lubrication, a layer of protection from all the sharp thoughts in your head.

I can't think of anything more crushing than slowly, over time, realizing exactly how wrong you were about someone.