I have a natural tendency to feel well about the world, I suppose, one way or another. But then there is the problem of pain. There are things like [Abraham] Lincoln's beloved little boy dying.

Surely there is something to be said for drawing a circle around our attention and remaining within that circle. But how large should this circle be?

I'm most honest about writing when I'm talking to family or friends, not to newspapers.

You don't come to live here unless the delusion of a reality shaped around your own desires isn't a strong aspect of your personality. A reality shaped around your own desires - there is something sociopathic in that ambition.

If you're going to write a good book, you have to make mistakes and you have to not be so cautious all the time.

When I see my friends engaging in a Twitter war for an afternoon, I think that would destroy me for a month.

Boys are just boys after all, but sometimes girls really seem to be the turn of a pale wrist, or the sudden jut of a hip, or a clutch of very dark hair falling across a freckled forehead. I'm not saying that's what they really are. I'm just saying sometimes it seems that way, and that those details (a thigh mole, a full face flush, a scar the precise shape and size of a cashew nut) are so many hooks waiting to land you.