Paris was a museum displaying exactly itself.

But I care about the reader, and I'm trying to keep the reader's attention for as long as I can.

College wasn't like the real world. In the real world people dropped names based on their renown. In college, people dropped names based on their obscurity.

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.

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.

The more she thought about it, the more Madeleine understood that extreme solitude didn't just describe the way she was feeling about Leonard. It explained how she'd always felt when she was in love. It explained what love was like and, just maybe, what was wrong with it.

What if you had faith and performed good works, what if you died and went to heaven, and what if all the people you met there were people you didn't like?