In Madeleine's face was a stupidity Mitchell had never seen before. It was the stupidity of all normal people. It was the stupidity of the fortunate and the beautiful, of everybody who got what they wanted in life and so remained unremarkable.

Being a writer is a solitary life. So the little part of me that's an actor still enjoys the theatrical part of reading and doing the voices and telling the story.

Maybe the best proof that the language is patriarchal is that it oversimplifies feeling.

People don't save other people. People save themselves.

Children learn to speak Male or Female the way they learn to speak English or French.

Everyone struggles against despair, but it always wins in the end. It has to. It's the thing that lets us say goodbye.

That's the way I will write characters, put a fair amount of myself in them, and then everyone else who was like that person, I will pick and choose.