Everyday is a bank account, and time is our currency. No one is rich, no one is poor, we've got 24 hours each.

If you aren't following your bliss, there is a discrepancy in your psychology that needs to be healed, it needs to be mended.

If you're doing something, if you're following something that is directly at odds with who you are, you've got to slow down and ask yourself why you're following that dream.

I'm not a literary writer who is wedded to notions of realism and fiction. I believe that you can write anything if you can feel it convincingly.

Honestly, in retrospect, I would wish for future generations to have the ability to have a coming out process that was less alcohol-soaked than mine was.

I think outsiders sometimes produce the best fictional perspectives on reality because they're set apart from it, so they have a unique view from the border.

I think we need to always mimic reality in our fiction. I think that we can stir things up and reveal a truth beneath the surface in that way as well.

This is not an international thriller so much as a fiercely literate attempt to subvert the thriller genre itself.

I think that I am profoundly influenced by writers who have explored loss, and longing, and fear. Those influences have turned me into a thriller writer, essentially.

I encourage young people to refrain from putting themselves in dangerous situations in the name of validating themselves sexually.

I am one of those people, and I may be personally biased, who wishes that I had some place to come out of the closet besides a bar.

If I knew I was positive, why would I have ever gone to PAW to take a test?

The noble title of "dissident" must be earned rather than claimed; it connotes sacrifice and risk rather than mere disagreement.

Lists are anti-democratic, discriminatory, elitist, and sometimes the print is too small.

Difficulties are God's errands; and when we are sent upon them, we should esteem it a proof of God's confidence.

Acknowledge people, not their jobs.

We are united in a wait-and-see approach.

The people you have to lie to, own you. The things you have to lie about, own you.

I am a shark, the ground is my ocean, and most people can't even swim.

They may seize On the white wonder of dear Juliet's hand And steal immortal blessing from her lips, Who, even in pure and vestal modesty, Still blush, as thinking their own kisses sin.

Why we are here is important, but to know where we are going is imperative. It's not what you've got, it's what you use, that makes a difference in how your life turns out.