I didn't think anyone who had to demand respect ever got it.

I've never had a mentor personally of any kind. It feels like, generally, in the writing world or the art world, it's more of a thing in America, because you have writing programs, which we don't have. You have these amazing writers who are teachers. I never did a writing program so I never met a writer until I was published. I guess I can't really explain my compulsion for writing these kind of mentor characters.

On the one hand I'm writing about somebody about whom I say in the book, "The only thing worse than being a statistic is being a statistical anomaly." So I'm writing about a particularly unlucky person. So that's a special type of hell, to be particularly unlucky.

Sometimes I think the human animal doesn't really need food or water to survive, only gossip.

Don't be afraid to have nothing.

Sometimes not talking is effortless, and other times it’s more exhausting than lifting pianos.

I was so happy I wanted to fold all the people into paper airplanes and fly them into the lidless eye of that big yellow moon.