I'm never going to be Tolstoy.

The rules your parents teach you to live by are very different than the rules the world actually runs by. Most of the conventional wisdom is not only wrong, it's a lie told to us by people who want to control us. It doesn't help us, it helps them. Pretty much everything we're told as children (and adults, really) by the established power structures in our lives are made up fairytales us to reinforce that control: Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, the tooth fairy, fat-free frozen dinners, religion, and metering lights on the highway--the list goes on

Frankly, I'd rather make a little bit less money if it means living in a better world for books and publishing in the future.

I sold a million books because I have a lot of fans, not because people hate me.

Communication is not what we say, but what you hear (which is a lesson I wish our educational system understood)

Hollywood, it's just like high school. Whoever is pretty and popular, everyone wants to be with.

I was stupid when I was 17 or 18. My thought process was that I thought that I was legitimately a hyper-genius, and so I wanted to go to the hardest academic school I could to see if I was really as smart as I thought I was.