I have learned that newborn infants roll their eyes around and move their heads and their arms in short jerky spasms. And if you homeschool them, they will stay this way forever.

For many years, people would say, "Only child? Must have been terrible," and I wanted to say, "You are mentally ill, because it was the greatest." You got all the attention. You never had to share anything. No one ever ate your food. No one ever took your toys. But the unintended consequence was that I didn't appreciate that being universally loved was not only not required for happiness, but also not possible.

I am someone who values truth - actual truth as opposed to 'truthiness.'

I would say 70 percent of people who are in therapy are in therapy not because of their upbringing, not because of their mean sister or obsessions, but because of anxiety brought about by lack of financial security.

My hope when I wrote the first book was that I would get to do it again. But it was not entirely clear that that would happen.

There is a need for expertise, for real expertise. I'm not doing much to help that cause, but I think we can find the healthy balance between intellectualism and anti-intellectualism. Jocks and nerds may come together, I believe it.

More people have more access to more readers for less money than ever before in history. It means a lot of dross; but it means a lot of very talented people can find and nurture a readership in ways that were not possible twenty years ago. From a creative perspective, that is all that writing is about.