They were snobs or idiots or both...yet she was inexplicably crushed by their coldness.

Kathy was a Republican, one of those people who used the unforgivable phrase "meant to be"--usually when describing her own good fortune or the disasters that had befallen other people.

He looks tired, like someone walked on his skin and left footprints.

Everyone we've lost, we'll find. Or they'll find us.

I'm a dogged person. I respond to adversity with a steely resistance.

We're [writers] all afraid of writing badly, and there are psychological reasons, like the bad interior of ourselves is somehow being revealed, but we all fear that, and you can't write well if you're not willing to write badly. That's why you have to make writing a habit, so it feels normal and not strange.

A sense of that kind of narrative movement that we experience online could have been in my mind easily, though not consciously. I do rely so much on my unconscious, the way I write my stuff the way I do. I let my unconscious work. I have better ideas that way and more interesting work.