Good writing is good writing, and I'm so happy when I read it.

And specialness - everyone wants it. But Jesus, is it the most essential thing there is? Most people aren't talented. So what are they supposed to do - kill themselves?

Twitter," said Manny, waving his hand. "You know what that is? Termites with microphones.

And didn't it always go like that--body parts not lining up the way you wanted them to, all of it a little bit off, as if the world itself were an animated sequence of longing and envy and self-hatred and grandiosity and failure and success, a strange and endless cartoon loop that you couldn't stop watching, because, despite all you knew by now, it was still so interesting.

But it had no doubt sprung from true emotion, for all that parents ever wanted, really, was for you to love their child the way they did.

Wasn't the whole point of being an artist, or at least part of it, that you didn't have to wear a tie?

"Unputdownable" is, I suppose, something we all dream of, maybe without knowing it. I realized, some time ago, that a novel can hold a lot, and it made sense that this one was not of the sleek and economical variety, but instead the "full" type. Novel as piñata. And the reader does the whacking. I had a central idea, which is to look at what happens to talent over time.