It is amazing to me, now, how such wild imaginings and philosophies - inspired by a night charged with frights and calamities - made such perfectly good sense to Owen Meany and me, but good friends are nothing to each other if they are not supportive.

What a phrase that is: 'that explains everything!' I know better than to think anything 'explains everything' today.

To each other, we were as normal and nice as the smell of bread. We were just a family. In a family even exaggerations make perfect sense.

Be serious. Life hurts. Reflect what hurts. I don't mean that you can't also be funny, or have fun, but at the end of the day, stories are about what you lose.

The building of the architecture of a novel - the craft of it - is something I never tire of.

Ambition robs you of your childhood. The moment you want to become an adult—in any way—something in your childhood dies.

It was a sound like someone trying not to make a sound.