My favorite reader is one that revisits books and gets something new out of them each time.

Yes, writing is not easy. But can any writer imagine NOT writing?

A lot of times, when people send me books to read - new writers mostly - I find that the book is still in a draft stage and that before it can leave the writer's hands and head to a publisher, it needs about five more revisions. Some people don't want to do that.

I'm always wondering if he'll return. Sometimes I pray that he doesn't. And sometimes I hope he will. I wish on falling stars and eyelashes. Absence isn't solid the way death is. It's fluid, like language. And it hurts so much...so, so much.

I think I'd rather have my heart broke than do the breaking. —Lena

Everything I write, I read out loud. It has to sound a certain way. It has to look a certain way on the page.

You can't always be pushing people away. Someday nobody'll come back.