It was that summer, too, that I began the cutting, and was almost as devoted to it as my newfound loveliness. I adored tending to myself, wiping a shallow red pool of my blood away with a damp washcloth to magically reveal, just above my naval: queasy. Applying alcohol with dabs of a cottonball, wispy shreds sticking to the bloody lines of: perky. I had a dirty streak my senior year, which I later rectified.

I'm a huge fan of ghost stories, that sort of slow build, the suspense and the questioning about whether you're imagining something or if it's real.

Worries find you easily enough without inviting them.

My brain goes very easily into the darkness. It always has. There are people who like to see what's under the rock and people who don't, and for some reason I've always been one of those to say, 'Hey, let's flip over that rock.'

Nick is like a good stiff drink: He gives everything the correct perspective.

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.

Because isn’t that the point of every relationship: to be known by someone else, to be understood? He gets me. She gets me. Isn’t that the simple magic phrase?