Crazy people who are judged to be harmless are allowed an enormous amount of freedom ordinary people are denied.

Church always seemed the same. Jess could tune it out the same way he tuned out school, with his body standing up and sitting down in unison with the rest of the congregation but his mind numb and floating, not really thinking or dreaming but at least free.

...One reason I became a writer was that I figured out that if you call yourself a writer, you can read all you want and people think that you are working.

I am called to listen to the sound of my own heart -- to write the story within myself that demands to be told at that particular point in my life. And if I do this faithfully, clothing that idea in the flesh of human experience and setting it in a true place, the sound from my heart will resound in the reader's heart.

I was behaving, just like I promised, but fate intervened.

Death is very mysterious to us. One moment someone is there with us, and the next moment they're not.

You think it's so great to die and make everyone cry and carry on. Well it ain't.