I think everyone is "racist," to differing degrees, in that everyone's brain will automatically associate information with other information, based on the information they are looking at, but I think focusing on race in any manner that isn't neutral or self-aware probably increases racism.

When I'm talking to someone I think 'can I use this dialogue in a book,'" said Luis. "If the answer is no I try talking to someone else.

On average, since the urge to kill myself isn't so strong that I actually kill myself, the world is worth living in.

Though if love was an animal, Garret knew, it would probably be the Loch Ness Monster. If it didn’t exist, that didn’t matter. People made models of it, put it in the water, and took photos. The hoax of it was good enough. The idea of it. Though some people feared it, wished it would just go away, had their lives insured against being eaten alive by it.

My publisher had mailed [Bret Easton Ellis] Richard Yates. And when I talked to him he said he had read all my prose books. And he said something like, "You got a lot of mileage out of Dakota Fanning."

I think mostly the commodifying comes after I've done something that has some other value to me.

Life, people learned, was not easy. Life was not cake. Life was not a carrot cake.