Can I ask why you’re throwing knives at cheese?’ ‘Caleb came by to discuss something,’ Tobias says, leaning his head against the wall as he looks at me. ‘And knife-throwing just came up somehow.’ ‘As it so often does,’ I say, a small smile inching across my face.

I don't have a bullet in my head, do I? So I'm fine.

If you actually succeed in creating a utopia, you've created a world without conflict, in which everything is perfect. And if there's no conflict, there are no stories worth telling - or reading!

Peter would probably throw a party if I stopped breathing.' 'Well,' he says, 'I would only go if there was cake.

Sometimes crying or laughing are the only options left, and laughing feels better right now.

You need to be passionate about the creative work that you're doing, but you need to be kind of emotionally separated from how people react to it or how it does. Those things should be secondary, and primary should be your love of the creative act.

Trust me when I tell you, Eaton boy, that resisting is worth doing.