When we read the right book generously, it can change the way think about the world around us.

I know that books seem like the ultimate thing that's made by one person, but that's not true. Every reading of a book is a collaboration between the reader and the writer who are making the story up together.

The fourth way to get a boy to like you is to be yourself. Now, I am contractually obligated as an adult to give that advice, even though it doesn't work. But yeah, be yourself, even though no one has any idea what it means to be yourself. Like whose self would I otherwise be being?

Maybe some people need to believe in a proper and omnipotent God to pray, but I don't.

I was struck by an awful thought, the kind that cannot be taken back once it escapes into the open air of consciousness; it seemed to me that this was not a place you go to live. It was a place you go to die.

I hadn’t been in proper school in three years. My parents were my two best friends. My third best friend was an author who did not know I existed.

Writing does not resurrect. It buries.