What we [writers] do might be done in solitude and with great desperation, but it tends to produce exactly the opposite. It tends to produce community and in many people hope and joy.

Books are wonderful, but they aren't that powerful.

But if these years have taught me anything it is this: you can never run away. Not ever. The only way out is in.

A form wherein we can enjoy simultaneously what is best in both the novel and the short story form. My plan was to create a book that affords readers some of the novel's long-form pleasures but that also contains the short story's ability to capture what is so difficult about being human - the brevity of our moments, their cruel irrevocability.

You ask everybody you know: How long does it usually take to get over it? There are many formulas. One year for every year you dated. Two years for every year you dated. It's just a matter of will power: The day you decide it's over, it's over. You never get over it.

If you were a nerd computer geek in 1982, the amount of isolation you felt - at least what I experienced, or the kids I knew, the isolation they felt - was almost total. They were not part of society; no one thought they were cool.

When she smiles niggers ask her for her hand in marriage; when I smile folks check their wallets.