We have this habit of romanticizing the lives of writers. I remember when I was a kid, I was like, 'I want to be Kurt Vonnegut.'

The sky is like a monochromatic contemporay painting, drawing me in its illusion of depth, pulling me up.

You like someone who can't like you back because unrequited love can be survived in a way that once-requited love cannot.

How can you read and talk at the same time?” I asked. “Well, I usually can’t, but neither the book nor the conversation is particularly intellectually challenging.

I think it's crazy, crazy that book tours lose so much money. They shouldn't. Book tours should be part of what keeps independent bookstores vibrant and profitable.

As lives go, I'll take the quietly desperate over the radically bipolar.

I went on spouting bullshit Encouragements as Gus's parents, arm in arm, hugged each other and nodded at every word. Funerals, I had decided, are for the living.