The job of reading is to use stories as a way into seeing other people as we see ourselves

...all I have to do is stay in between the lines and make sure that no one is too close to me and I am not too close to anyone and keep leaving. Maybe it felt like this for her, too, but I could never feel like this alone.

And then the line was quite but not dead. I almost felt like he was there in my room with me, but in a way it was better, like I was not in my room and he was not in his, but instead we were together in some invisible and tenuous third space that could only be visited on the phone.

I hate the idea that, when it comes to books and learning, hard is often seen as the opposite of fun. It's strange to me that we should be so quick to give up on a book or a math problem when we are so willing to grapple, for centuries if necessary, with a single level of Angry Birds.

I write about broken people who need other people in order to go on. But those are the only kind of people I know to exist. We are all broken.

You're arguing that the fragile, rare thing is beautiful simply because it is fragile and rare. But that's a lie, and you know it.

Sometimes the way you think about someone isn't the way they actually are.