In my opinion, actual heroism, like actual love, is a messy, painful, vulnerable business—and I wanted to try to reflect that.

The way we still essentializ, we're constantly essentializing people as merely poor, or merely other, and in the end you can't have a relationship with people. I think the biggest job of adulthood is to learn to imagine other people complexly.

Me: "If you want me to be a teenager, don't send me to Support Group. Buy me a fake ID so I can go to clubs, drink vodka, and take pot." Mom: "You don't take pot, for starters." Me: "See, that's the kind of thing I'd know if you got me a fake ID.

As much as life can suck, it always beats the alternative.

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.

The whole pleasure of being in a state of unknowing is that as long as you don’t know, all possible outcomes feel as if they are happening.

Nothing has ever looked like that ever in all of human history.