I think maybe I know why,' she finally said. 'Why?' 'Maybe all the strings inside him broke,' she said.

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

I mean, I am pretty fabulous. Am I not?' 'You're a pillar of fabulosity in the community,' I tell him.

If we restructure things to see that the hero's journey is a degree in astrophysics rather than a journey to star in a reality show, that's a better world.

The world is broken, and all our attempts to fix it will inevitably fail, and some day all life will be extinguished from the planet and there will be no one to remember that any of us ever did anything. But this fact, strangely, does not delegitimize hope, because every now and again we find evidence that hope is helpful. This evidence, in my opinion, should be celebrated-even as we lament and fight the devastation.

We have this weird thing in the world where you don't get insulted for what you do, you get insulted for who you are.

I don't know where people got the idea that characters in books are supposed to be likable. Books are not in the business of creating merely likeable characters with whom you can have some simple identification with. Books are in the business of creating great stories that make you're brain go ahhbdgbdmerhbergurhbudgerbudbaaarr.