I will play out the string. I will not betray your trust. I will find you.

She has great breasts," the Colonel said without looking up from the whale. "DO NOT OBJECTIFY WOMEN'S BODIES!" Alaska shouted. Now he looked up. "Sorry. Perky breasts." "That's not any better!

That was the worst part about having cancer, sometimes: The physical evidence of disease separates you from other people.

Peter Van Houten was the only person I’d ever come across who seemed to (a) understand what it’s like to be dying, and (b) not have died.

I'm sorry. I know you loved her. It was hard not to.

In general-like not just in fiction but in life-it doesn't work out well when someone imagines someone else as a manic pixie dream girl or an Edward Cullen or anything other than a full, complex human being. That said, while I've tried to reflect that in my books, I don't think I've always succeeded, because I am always running up against my own insufficiencies and biases etc.

But it was only hot outside, and generally I only walked outside between one air-conditioned place to another.