Maybe our favorite quotations say more about us than about the stories and people we're quoting.

I hated cranberry sauce, but for some reason my mom persisted in her lifelong belief that it was my very favorite food, even though every single Thanksgiving I politely declined to include it on my plate.

I believe in that line from An Imperial Affliction. 'The risen sun too bright in her losing eyes.' That's God, I think, the rising sun, and the light is too bright and her eyes are losing but they aren't lost.

Every second of your definitionally temporary consciousness, you are choosing how you spend something that will not last forever.

I hate the idea that, when it comes to books and learning, hard is often seen as the opposite of fun. It's strange to me that we should be so quick to give up on a book or a math problem when we are so willing to grapple, for centuries if necessary, with a single level of Angry Birds.

And then I screwed up and the Colonel screwed up and Takumi screwed up and she slipped through our fingers.

This is what I love about novels - both reading them and writing them. They jump into the abyss to be with you where you are.