Everyone wants to feel like they could destroy a small-to-medium-to-large part of someone who loves them.

Why were we never together anymore, just alone in each other's vicinity?

I wasn't sure if it was safe for me to be sharing time and space with other people, who all seemed so much gentler and safer and less of a secret to themselves than I felt I was.

I knew that my husband was a song that I had forgotten the words to and I was a fuzzy photograph of someone he used to love.

That's the thing about fiction, that you live in it totally for a little while, but you must forget it, sometimes totally forget it, in order to go about the rest of your day.

But we always avoided talking about these things—difficult things—and I wondered if that meant we'd be a little uncomfortable with or disappointed by each other for the rest of our lives.

Lately, I couldn't remember those years, as if childhood was a movie I'd only seen the previews to.

None of us know how to fix ourselves, at least not entirely, not well enough.

That boy never seemed to smile and he wore long sleeves year-round, and I was not so different from him—we were both unable to get near the real life in life.

I couldn't blame anyone for what was in me, because I am, like everyone, populated entirely by myself.

I was thinking about stabbing myself in the face—not actually considering stabbing myself in the face, but thinking that it would be a physical expression of how I felt.

Never confuse someone else's inability to do something with its inability to be done.

I fear - as far as I can tell - that most undergraduate degrees in computer science these days are basically Java vocational training.

...after a few days at the desk, telling the truth in an interesting way turns out to be as easy and pleasurable as bathing a cat.

You must understand the troubles of that man farthest down before you can help him.

Let the fear of a danger be a spur to prevent it.

Liberal papers are not necessarily liberal.

Character is an invincible force, which acts by presence and without means

I can remember at college, living on 30-cent meals.

Californians tend to be outspoken. When the great migration began, the more timid people must have stayed home, and the bolder ones headed west.

I don't know what to do when I'm not working. I lose my mind if I'm not constantly doing something.