I was about 13, in some ways, when I wrote the first book. Approximately 18 when I wrote the second.

If you're interested in how people behave, if you're interested in the way they talk about themselves, the way the conceive of themselves, it's very hard to ignore drugs nowadays, because that is so much part of the conversation.

[T]hat I could find company and consolation and hope in an object pulled almost at random from a bookshelf--felt akin to an instance of religious grace.

He wanted this someone to see how much he hurt.

But nothing disturbs the feeling of specialness like the presence of other human beings feeling identically special.

Popularity has become its own justification.

The personality susceptible to the dream of limitless freedom is a personality also prone, should the dream ever sour, to misanthropy and rage.