If you agree with an outside person's interpretation of you, that's a happy bit of affirmation. It means you're communicating externally what you believe to be true internally. If you disagree, it helps clarify how you understand yourself. And maybe makes you productively question how to improve your communication skills.

I want the plot to be as complicated as possible. Usually I'll write all the way through to an end, and then I go back and try to fix the ending so that it makes sense. I don't think out the plot ahead of time.

I think what can be most shameful or embarrassing is when our bodies broadcast a secret we'd prefer no one to know. This is why I hate rashes, in particular face rashes.

The belief that one's suffering has a greater cosmic purpose, and is thus more exciting and more noble, well, it made a lot of sense to me.

We're not saints, any of us. Maybe somebody is, but I don't know those people. But we all know people who behave very smugly and are very egotistical and put you down as a manner of improving their own place in the world or improving their own place in the world.

Every once in a while when I get a migraine, I like to think, "Who hates me today?"

It's fascinating to imagine two successful writers in one house. But when you think about it, it isn't very unusual. In fact, so many writers have writer spouses.