…there was no more safety to be found in love than there was to be found in a virus.

The concept of writing a novel and not knowing where it's going - I don't know how to do that. Novels are plot- and character-driven, so if I don't know what becomes of people, how can I know where it should begin?

Don’t you understand?” he would say, “You imagine the story better than I remember it.

If I had to be anything," he told her, "I'd probably be a socialist, but I don't want to be anything.

Sell my old clothes - I'm off to heaven

He wished he could arrange a maiming as a kind of moral lesson

Whatever I write, no matter how gray or dark the subject matter, it's still going to be a comic novel.