I spent my entire childhood feeling like a freak because I liked to read. It's just like, "Eh, no one else likes to read but me; I must be crazy!"

She would be a new person, she vowed. They said no matter how far a mule travels it can never come back a horse, but she would show them all.

We're accepted as long as we conform to what we are expected to be, and I'm sure that's not any different for anyone else.

I'm really into the rights of immigrants, the rights of the working poor. I'm one of those little activist types. I probably would have just gone to law school. And the scary part is that I was one of those kids who always tested really well. You put a test in front of me, and I would have been like do-do-do-do-do. I probably would have been some community lawyer somewhere - if anything, that's probably what I would have been doing.

I think that if you're writing about the human condition, my God, you've got to start at base: point zero, point one, is the body.

You eventually erase her contact info from your phone but not the pictures you took of her in bed while she was naked and asleep, never those.

A person doesn't mourn forever.