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

Gratitude is the proper response for the absolute astonishment of getting to be alive, and aware, and an essential part of this crazy, sprawling story.

I'm a grenade, I just want to stay away from people and read books, and think.

I kept waiting for that loneliness and nervousness to make me want to go back. But it never did.

Without pain, how could we know joy?' This is an old argument in the field of thinking about suffering and its stupidity and lack of sophistication could be plumbed for centuries but suffice it to say that the existence of broccoli does not, in any way, affect the taste of chocolate.

Books belong to their readers.

I was thinking about this girl you love so much," she said, "And this place I love so much. And how that happens. How you can just fall into it.