I am not just what I remember. I am also what I dream.

bitter is a bad way to live!

I write a book over a period of months or years, and when I'm done with it, usually another year goes by before I see it in print. It's hard to be patient and wait

After Ive sent my revised draft to my agent and editor, they suggest more improvement sand again, this revision phase can take anywhere from a few hours to a few months.

Generally I finish a first draft in 2-6 months, then I set it aside for a while so that when I come back to it I can read it with fresh eyes and figure out how to improve it.

When writing isn't going well-then the bad thing about being a writer is that I also have the freedom and flexibility to do something badly, and no one else can fix it for me.

I started trying to write when I was in second or third grade.

It's just so much fun to make up characters, situations, and everything else about a story. I have so much freedom and flexibility to do whatever I want.

I like playing around with the words; I love it when I feel like I've picked the exact right word to describe whatever it is I'm trying to describe

I like to know what I'm celebrating before I put on a party hat.

A ssure you, the more I travel through time, the more I witness, the more I realize that there are things that are both strange and wonderful, far beyond human comprehension.

There is no beauty in sadness. No honor in suffering. No growth in fear. No relief in hate. It’s just a waste of perfectly good happiness.

Your words hurt, Jazz. They hurt like cotton balls thrown in my direction.

I have a doggy, a Japanese Akita, who I live to play with.

He grinned at her, and she grinned at him, and it seemed to Maria that suddenly the sun came out.

I think there is something very relatable in the idea that you hit a certain age, later in your life, where you realize you have to pick up the rug and see what's underneath it and deal with stuff.

What restrains us from killing is partly fear of punishment, partly moral scruple, and partly what may be described as a sense of humor

We tend to think of science as finding equations, like E=MC2, that are simple and elegant. But maybe some theories are complicated, and we can only find the simple ones.

The imagination is a spiritual apparatus. Unable to invent the world, it does the next best thing, and that is to assemble it piecemeal, ugly and strange, bright and clear, and dumbly discovered.

I had such a great upbringing in Puerto Rico, and it was just a very normal life.

What am I responsible for? Who am I responsible to? Everybody? How come when Archie Bunker nailed everybody, it was funny - but when I do it, it's not?