Rich children are always blond, Jocelyn goes. It has to do with vitamins.

[I]t may be that a crowd at a particular moment of history creates the object to justify its gathering.

I am at my worst trying to write about things that overlap with my life.

I think the one thing that's changed over time is that I've come to realise, as a fiction writer, the fact that I don't think it will work out, doesn't mean that it actually won't.

The problem was precision, perfection; the problem was digitization, which sucked the life out of everything that got smeared through its microscopic mesh.

I grew up in the 70s, when people talked on the phone - and just talked more. I remember the phone was the epicenter of our house. I spent hours every evening as a teenager waiting for the phone to ring and talking to my friends. Before the age of technology, it was also easier to just disappear from the face of the earth.

I'm always happy," Sasha said. "Sometimes I just forget.