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

I think I was always writing books that had very clear scenic structures. I do tend to write in scenes. I do tend to have a fair amount of dialogue. And I do tend to use stories that don't sprawl all over the place, that have a very sharp focus in terms of how they unfold in time.

I find that even small changes sometimes jog you out of a mental rut.

It just took some people a little longer than others to realize how few words they needed to get by, how much of life they could negotiate in silence.

She would be a mentor and an inspiration to girls like herself, the quiet ones who'd sleepwalked their way through high school, knowing nothing except that they couldn't possibly be happy with any of the choices the world seemed to be offering them.

To this day, she’s still sad. Because there’s not some finite amount of pain inside us. Our bodies and minds just keep manufacturing more of it. I’m just saying that I took the pain that was inside of her at that moment and made it my own. And it didn’t hurt me at all.

The lesson you have to learn as novelist is how to be collaborative, and how to say, "I don't get to dictate this."