Holly McGhee said I should come to dinner with them. That first dinner, I said something pretty smart-alecky, and Alison [McGhee] laughed really hard at it. It made me happy.

We all live in fear of getting blocked no matter what kind of art we're trying to do. It happens all the time, but I prefer to think of it as a bad day.

I hate to cook and love to eat.

Once upon a time," he said out loud to the darkness. He said these words because they were the best, the most powerful words that he knew and just the saying of them comforted him.

It is a bad thing to have love and nowhere to put it.

I'm just doing what I've done my whole life, which is talking to people about books and making them read. It's what I do in my friendships. "Here, you have to read this, you have to read this."

I'm continually astonished with myself how different people bring out things in me that I never knew I had inside me. Each new friendship can make you a new person, because it opens up new doors inside of you.