I picture my books as movies when I get stuck, and when I'm working on a new idea, the first thing I do is hit theaters to work out pacing and mood.

I say, 'I will not be your weakness, Sean Kendrick.' Now he looks at me. He says, very softly, 'It's late for that, Puck.

It occurred to me that there was a story behind the scar -- maybe not as dramatic as the story of my wrists, but a story nonetheless -- and the fact that everyone had a story behind some mark on their inside or outside suddenly exhausted me, the gravity of all those untold pasts.

I leaned across the table towards the crumb-thrower. "Do that again," I said, loud enough to be heard over the opera singer, Dolly, my mother, and the smell of the breadsticks, "and I will sell your firstborn child to the devil.

We sat like that for a long while, and when we stood up, all my sad things were in boxes, and Beck was my father.

I could just barely see the dark curve of his shoulder, and something about the shape it made, the gesture it suggested, filled me with a sort of fierce, awful affection.

Sam looked at me, yellow eyes catching and holding me. "I miss being me. I miss you. All the time.