I can run fast when I want to run fast, and I've always been good at destroying things.

To write a damn good thriller, you need a killer attitude.

I just started trying to figure out how to write [something] which was unlike anything anybody had ever seen, and once I felt like I had figured that out I tried to figure out what kind of book I could write that would be unlike anything anybody had ever seen. When I started writing A Million Little Pieces I felt like it was the right story with the style I had been looking for, and I just kept going.

The greatest rules of dramatic writing are conflict, conflict, conflict.

To say that you can't see echoes of the past in what I do would be absurd. Everything that has preceded me has affected me.

Pain is the feeling. Suffering is the effect the pain inflicts. If one can endure pain, one can live without suffering. If one can withstand pain, one can withstand anything. If one can learn to control pain, one can learn to control oneself.

Dreams can come true there [Los Angeles]in ways impossible anywhere else, and they can get destroyed as well.