Getting a book published made me feel a little bit sad... I felt driven by the need to write a book, rather than the need to write. I needed to figure out what was important to me as a writer.

I read differently now, more painstakingly, knowing I am probably revisiting the books I love for the last time. (245)

What interests me in writing a novel is taking really remote voices, characters, and stories and beginning to create some kind of web.

I have always written about characters who fall somewhere in the spectrum between solitary and totally alienated.

The accolades, just like the scrapes and bruises, fade in the end, and all you're left with is your ambition.

ONE THING I AM NEVER GOING TO DO WHEN I GROW UP Is fall in love, drop out of college, learn to subsist on water and air, have a species named after me, and ruin my life.

Once upon a time there was a boy who loved a girl, and her laughter was a question he wanted to spend his whole life answering.