Failing to grapple with complexity actually turns out to be a pretty bad life strategy.

I was not religious, but I liked rituals. I liked the idea of connecting an action with remembering.

His every syllable flirted. Honestly, he kind of turned me on. I didn't even know that guys could turn me on-not, like, in real life

I mean, it’s stupid to miss someone you didn’t even get along with. But I don’t know, it was nice, you know, having someone you could always fight with.

All good American literature is always interested in people who are ambiguously heroic, like Gatsby.

It's not fair," I said. "It's just so goddamned unfair." "The world," he said, "is not a wishgranting factory.

That's how writing works, at least for me: even the stuff that doesn't work out gets funneled into the stuff that does work out.