We're all impostors to ourselves. By that I mean that we know instinctively, intimately, the difference between whom we are inside and who we appear to be to others. Most of the time - when we aren't flat lying about something or playing a particularly stylized role in some heightened dramatic situation - this difference between the internal and the external is modest and manageable.

When Loughner himself speaks and we find out his real influences are Spiderman, 'Gnome Chomsky,' Taylor Swift, and Dr. Bronner, then what?

A writer turns his life into material, and if you’re in his life, he uses yours, too.

Everyone loves a witch hunt as long as it's someone else's witch being hunted.

The lines we draw that make us who we are are potent by virtue of being non-negotiable, and even, at some level, indefensible.

You thought you were found but you realize that you were lost, and someday you may discover that you're lost now.

At the beginning of a novel, a writer needs confidence, but after that what's required is persistence. These traits sound similar. They aren't. Confidence is what politicians, seducers and currency speculators have, but persistence is a quality found in termites. It's the blind drive to keep on working that persists after confidence breaks down.