I am a giant squid of anger.

The town was paper, but the memories were not.

But I was not in the band, because I suffer from the kind of tone deafness that is generally associated with actual deafness

The ideas of directing attention outward, trying to imagine other people complexly, trying not to see myself as the center of the universe - these concepts have become important to me, and I hope they're at work in my life on a minute-by-minute basis.

Sometimes people don't understand the promises they're making when they make them.

The fundamental mistake I had always made - and that she had, in fairness, always led me to make - was this: Margo was not a miracle. She was not an adventure. She was not a fine and precious thing. She was a girl.

Like all sick children,' he answered dispassionately, 'you say you don't want pity, but your very existence depends upon it.