She told her therapist it reminded her of coming home the summer after her freshman year at Rutgers, stepping back into the warm bath of family and friends, loving it for a week or two, and then feeling trapped, dying to return to school, missing her roommates and her cute new boyfriend, the classes and the parties and the giggly talks before bed, understanding for the first time that that was her real life now, that this, despite everything she'd ever loved about it, was finished for good.

I've been a little bit obsessed with religion, without being a religious person, for about a decade.

I have actual dreams of Bruce Springsteen calling me up on stage to wear a bandanna and play rhythm guitar next to Little Steven.

I really wanted to be a musician, but it turned out I had no sense of time.

Sooner or later we all lose our loved ones. We all have to suffer, every last one of us.

There's not some finite amount of pain inside us. Our bodies and minds just keep manufacturing more of it.

I was an English major in college, I went to a creative-writing program, and all my life, I really read and thought about fiction as a craft and an art form. I feel like I know a lot about it, and can trust my instincts.