I like to know the places I write about. I feel like it helps me ground the novel. My novels are 'realistic novels,' but they can also be fantastical, so it's nice to have a setting that grounds them a little bit.

...But there's always suffering, Pudge. Homework or malaria or having a boyfriend who lives far away when there's a good-looking boy lying next to you. Suffering is universal. It's the one thing Buddhists, Christians, and Muslims are all worried about.

You can't dingleberry that! That's a flagrant misuse of the dingleberry!

She fell apart because that's what happens.

Go spit in the face of our inevitable obsolescence and finish your @#$&ng novel.

Compromise is when you do what I tell you and I do what I want. ~Tiny Cooper

Everywhere man blames nature and fate, yet his fate is mostly but the echo of his character, and passions, his mistakes, and weaknesses."--Democritus An Abundance of Katherines---John Green