I take something that happened to me in 1983, and I make it happen to somebody else in 1943. I pick my life apart that way, try to understand it better by writing straight through it.

I love you more than I hate everything else.

You know," he said, "I keep wanting to say that it's like Simon Snow threw up in here... but it's more like someone else ate Simon Snow—like somebody went to an all-you-care-to-eat Simon Snow buffet—and then threw up in here.

It never occurred to me when I was young that I could be an author. That would be like saying, "I want to be a movie star" or "I want to be a wizard." I didn't have any concept of what that path would look like. Maybe that's why I didn't publish my first book until I was 38.

it’s like swimming upstream. Or … falling down a cliff and grabbing at branches, trying to invent the branches as I fall.

I know that people change. I thought... I thought we're going to change together. I thought that's what it meant to be in love.

She bent her neck back and kissed him like she never had before. Like she wasn't scared of doing it wrong.