People come from internally, from other places in the United States, but also displaced people from other parts of the world. They come here. If you walk in the streets of San Francisco, you hear all the languages. You smell all the foods. You listen to the music from everywhere. There's great diversity.

I'm such a control freak. I want to control even my own death. Decide when I will die and how.

Seated by her side in the narrow cabin, pressing cold compresses to her forehead and holding her while she vomited, he felt profoundly happy.

Aphrodite is about lust and gluttony - the only two sins worth committing, in my opinion.

It's good for a writer to come from journalism because it gives you the tools. A journalist knows that he or she can lose the reader in six lines, so try to keep the attention of the reader. Also, you learn to research, and to conduct an interview - to extract from the person whatever you need from that person.

Wishes and fears are illusions, Dil Bahadur, not realities. You must practice detachment.

...a fixation is very stubborn: it burrows into the brain and breaks the heart. There are many fixations, but love is the worst.