And I put the latte down on a table, awash in the happy middle of my greatest adventure.

If drunk were cookies, I'd be Famous Amos

The important thing is not whatever nonsense the voices are saying, but what the voices are feeling.

I think when you're 16, if you have good parents, they generally just fade in the background. I had great parents, and because they were great, I thought very little about them in high school.

I'll just go over to the Duke's," I said. "Her parents already told me I could stay there. I'll go over there and open all my presents, and talk about how my parents neglect me, and then maybe the Duke will give me some of her presents because she feels so bad about how my mom doesn't love me.

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.

We must strike down the insidious lie that a book is the creation of an individual soul labouring in isolation. We must strike it down because it threatens the overall quality and breadth of American literature.