I remember liking to write stories pretty early on. In fourth or fifth grade, they would give us the beginning of a story, and we were supposed to finish it. I remember liking that. But I didn't think about deciding to become a writer until high school at about the age of 16.

And in some of the houses, people were getting old and sick and were dying, leaving others to grieve. It was happening all the time, unnoticed, and it was the thing that really mattered. What really mattered in life, what gave it weight, was death.

That was when Leonard realized something crucial about depression. The smarter you were, the worse it was. The sharper your brain, the more it cut you up.

I think the suicides in my first book came from the idea of growing up in Detroit. If you grow up in a city like that you feel everything is perishing, evanescent and going away very quickly.

that since Cecilia’s suicide, the Lisbon’s could hardly wait for the night to forget themselves in sleep

Don't waste your time on life.

Bubble gum angels swooped from top margins or scraped their wings between teeming paragraphs, maidens with golden hair dripped sea blue tears into the books spine, grape-colored whales spouted blood around a newspaper item (pasted in) listing arrivals to the endangered spieces list. Six hatchlings cried from shattered shells near an entry made on Easter. Cecilia had filled the pages with a profusion of colors and curlicues, candyland ladders and striped shamrocks.