The phrase booze and mischief left me worrying I'd stumbled into what my mother referred to as "the wrong crowd," but for the wrong crowd, they both seemed awfully smart.

And okay, fair enough, but there is this unwritten contract between author and reader and I think not ending your book kind of violates that contract.

There is always the risk: something is good and good and good and good, and then all at once it gets awkward. All at once, she sees you looking at her, and then she doesn't want to joke around with you anymore, because she doesn't want to seem flirty, because she doesn't want you to think she likes you. It's such a disaster, whenever, in the course of human relationships, someone begins to chisel away at the wall of separation between friendship and kissing.

I change my keyboard between every book. I usually shop around. I'm very passionate about the physical feel of pressing the keys. It's got to have the right springiness. I tend to find the built-in keys very unsatisfying, the keys are low-profile and don't really do anything - I want it to feel like I'm typing.

I’m not up for laughing, but their laughter makes the room feel safer, so we begin to explore.

It was not an eventful day. I should have done extraordinary things. I should have sucked the marrow out of life. But on that day, I slept eighteen hours out of a possible twenty-four.

All of us, poor & rich alike, have been conditioned by our upbringings. Impoverished men & women may become lulled into a state of "learned helplessness" without hope to change their lives. Likewise, the wealthy can walk in a state of "learned blindness" ignoring the desperation of the local & global poor.