Nothing beats novel writing because it's complete expression of you. You just control everything. Not even a movie director has that level of control.

Because, really, what was worse than lying wide-awake in the dark, watching your life drip away, one irreplaceable minute after another?

If anything, he seemed a little lonely, all too ready to open his heart at the slightest sign of interst.

When I was writing 'The Abstinence Teacher,' I really tried to immerse myself in contemporary American evangelical culture.

When things don't go well, it helps to think of yourself as a genius and the rest of the world as a bunch of idiots.

Nothing beats novel writing because it's complete expression of you. You just control everything. Not even a movie director has that level of control.

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.