When we think of death, we often imagine it as happening in degrees: We think of a sick person becoming less and less alive until finally they are gone.

If my public existence does anything worthwhile, hopefully it at least demystifies the author a bit, because I know when I was younger I felt like authors were like wizards or something. Turns out they're total muggles.

Writing, or at least good writing, is an outgrowth of that urge to use language to communicate complex ideas and experiences between people. And that's true whether you're reading Shakespeare or bad vampire fiction-reading is always an act of empathy. It's always an imagining of what it's like to be someone else.

I was blind and heart broken and didn't want to do anything and Gus burst into my room and shouted, "I have wonderful news!" And I was like, "I don't really want to hear wonderful news right now," and Gus said, "This is wonderful news you want to hear," and I asked him, "Fine, what is it?" and he said, "You are going to live a good and long life filled with great and terrible moments that you cannot even imagine yet!

You're not boring. You've got to stop saying that, or people will start believing you.

The only thing worse than having a party that no one attends is having a party attended only by two vastly, deeply uninteresting people.

And then I was asleep. That deep, can-still-taste-her-in-my-mouth sleep, that sleep that is not particularly restful but difficult to wake up from all the same.