You do not immortalize the lost by writing about them. Language buries, but does not resurrect.

Good friends are hard to find and impossible to forget.

memories fall apart too.

She's cute, I thought, but you don't need to like a girl who treats you like you're ten: You've already got a mom.

I wouldn't have cared if my girlfriend was a Jaguar-driving Cyclops with a beard - I'd have been grateful just to have someone to make out with.

One of the jobs of a writer is to add nuance and ambiguity to that straight line that people often draw to very specific kinds of heroism. Most of us don't get to be Snooki. For most of us heroism has to be in our everyday lives.

My responsibility is to try to tell true stories. To me a true story is always hopeful, but never simply, uncomplicatedly happy.