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

Every minute we were together, I felt like I was wandering in the dark through a strange house, groping for a light switch. And then, whenever I found one and turned it on, the bulb was dead.

He made me think of all the books I hadn't read, and all the ones I'd read but hadn't fully understood.

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.

I was writing very early, like I was involved in our high school literary magazine, which was called 'Pariah.' The football team was the Bears, and the literary magazine was 'Pariah.' It was great. It was definitely a real sub-culture. But I wrote stories for them.

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.