I don't have any real goals except to follow one good sentence with another... I'm not the kind of writer who has a map.

I guess love is the real suspension of disbelief.

It's perfectly natural to doubt your judgment about doubting your judgment.

It scares me. But then I get this big feeling, simple but exalted: He's like me, just with different details.

Everywhere you go, you see women more beautiful than yourself. You imagine him being attracted to them. You're drinking gasoline to stay warm.

Basically, all anyone has to do is ask me for fun details or tell me to be creative, and my mind turns to mud. I am instantly the most boring person you've ever met.

You have to shrink yourself to fit into this little life with him.

I feel in some ways I've had a difficult life. And it makes me the kind of writer I am, in what I value, what I respect, what I hold dear.

The only relationships I haven't wrecked right away were the ones that wrecked me later.

She seems sort of lost.' I thought, Lost how? How am I lost? Suddenly I felt lost.

I hate weddings,' she says. 'They make me feel so unmarried. Actually, even brushing my teeth makes me feel unmarried.

We are the sum and synergy of all our experiences.

In the real world, babysitting is a groovy way for young people to learn responsibility (and earn a little pocket money). In the Terrorverse, it's a plot device used to kill teenagers.

Without danger we cannot get beyond danger.... Each one of us requires the spur of insecurity to force us to do our best.

For whatever reason, I have never separated the technical from the ethical.

I want my commitment to ending girl marriage to be equal to my commitment to ending apartheid.

I was anticipating that some readers might misread [the book] ROOM itself as a hymn to homeschooling.

The eyes, like sentinels, hold the highest place in the body. [Lat., Oculi, tanquam, speculatores, altissimum locum obtinent.]

Desmond Mason is one of my best friends in the world. And he's a great, great talent.

When you get older and you start dating, I want you to be able to say one thing, 'I made a hook.'

The moment somebody's a president and you call him "Mr. President," (the person represents) our culture, our history, our sense as our nation.