I write about kids growing up, I write a lot about schools and parents, and all of my experiences with those things have been suburban experiences.

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.

I no longer believe that just about everything is funny, if viewed from the proper angle.

The interesting part about the writing process is that you can never see all the way to the end, not if something is happening over the course of a year and a half, or two years.

I write about kids growing up, I write a lot about schools and parents, and all of my experiences with those things have been suburban experiences.

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

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.