I was born in Patterson, New Jersey, and raised pretty much all around the country. My family tended to move from place to place following economic prospects and jobs and looking for new opportunities, so we changed schools, colleges, grade schools, high schools every 6 months to a year - depending on the breaks.

The hardest thing in the world is to stand alone. Your friends will not understand, will resent you, will want you to just stop it and let life go back to where it was. But you have to follow the quiet turning of your own considered conscience. It's a hard road.

As an atheist, I believe that all life is unspeakably precious, because it’s only here for a brief moment, a flare against the dark, and then it’s gone forever.

I want to have time. When you're doing a monthly book, you're like a man racing after a bus. You're breathless and red-faced. I want to build in quality control.

All love is unrequited. All of it.

For me, there's nothing sexier than a woman who can argue me into the ground and outsmart me...a woman who knows her own mind and isn't afraid to speak it.

We all are big believers in the notion that as a species we are better together than we are apart, that the common core of our shared humanity is stronger than that which seeks to marginalize us and factualize us and turn us against each other.