As I walk through the redwood trees, my sneakers sopping up days of rain, I wonder why bereaved people even bother with mourning clothes, when grief itself provides such an unmistakable wardrobe.

She's a sun-kissed beach girl who goes gothgrungepunkhippierockeremocoremetalfreakfashionistabraingeekboycrazyhiphoprastagirl to keep it under wraps.

I have an impulse to write all over the orange walls- I need an alphabet of endings ripped out of books, of hands pulled off of clocks, of cold stones, of shoes filled with nothing but wind.

The guy's life drunk, I think, makes Candide look like a sourpuss. Does he even know that death exists?

Remember how it was when we kissed? Armfuls and armfuls of light thrown right at us. A rope dropping down from the sky. How can the word love and the word life even fit in the mouth?

How could a mother who boils water for pasta leave two little girls behind?

Someone might as well roll up the whole sky, pack it away for good.

I can't shove the dark out of my way.

Let me just unsubscribe to my own mind already, because I don't get any of it.

That's a misconception, Lennie. The sky is everywhere, it begins at your feet.

The coolest guys aren't afraid to be feminists.

The dark skies of despair are no match for the bright skies of hope.

The vote is the most powerful instrument ever devised by man for breaking down injustice and destroying the terrible walls which imprison men because they are different from other men.

Through my fiction, I make mainstream readers see the new Americans as complex human beings, not as just The Other.

Though punishment be slow, still it comes.

Dreams in general take their rise from those incidents which have most occupied the thoughts during the day.

Wouldn't. Think. About. Ian.

I have lots of objects. Every object has a story, which makes me think I should write a story about every object.

Stories are attempts to share our values and beliefs. Storytelling is worthwhile when it tells what we stand for.

[Donald] Trump is fascism, that's all, so we have to find a way to work it out between Hillary [Clinton] and Bernie [Sanders].