Football is the most successful cult, in terms of members and profits, in human history. Oh wait, there's also religion.

We need books...because we are all, in the private kingdoms of our hearts, desperate for the company of a wise, true friend.

All readers come to fiction as willing accomplices to your lies. Such is the basic goodwill contract made the moment we pick up a work of fiction.

I don't really think of my narrator in terms of gender. I think of them much more in basic emotional terms. As an author, you either love yer peeps or you don't. There's no such thing as a "masculine voice" or a "feminine voice". Men and women think and speak and act in, like, a zillion different ways. Also, as a gross generalization: women tend to live closer to their feelings than men.

You've got all these parents who are projecting their pathologies of fear onto their kids and those kids are understandably messed up. Tragedies happen and that you have to allow kids to experience their own fear and guilt and sorrow. It's the cover-up that really screws people over. Unfortunately, America specializes in cover-ups.

I have a hard time defending the production of candy, given that it is basically crack for children and makes them dependent in unwholesome ways.

A lot of what I'm having to do to get myself weaned from football is really limit what media I allow myself to consume. And it's a big drag. But it's also the only way to kick the habit.