I had always wanted to be a writer who confused genre boundaries and who was read in multiple contexts.

I try not to become too regular an addict of any one subculture.

I never take any notes or draw charts or make elaborate diagrams, but I hold an image of the shape of a book in my head and work from that mental hologram.

I've never related to the work geek at all-it sounds much more horrible than nerd. Like a freak biting a chicken's head off in a sideshow.

I learned to write fiction the way I learned to read fiction - by skipping the parts that bored me.

Someday I would change my name to Shut Up and save everybody a lot of time.

I work on a laptop specifically so I can work in cafes and pretend I'm part of the human world.

What age is a black boy when he learns he's scary?

It was only as I wrote about fear that I began to find paths of access to feelings that were intolerable to me then.

I want what we all want," said Carl. "To move certain parts of the interior of myself into the exterior world, to see if they can be embraced.

I can't bear the silent ringing in my skull.

The greatest battles of life are fought out daily in the silent chambers of the soul.

You can stuff yourself with emotional fulfillment until it’s dribbling down your chin & your ego will quickly chomp it down and demand more.

When a sailor overcomes crushing adversity, there's a massive sense of accomplishment.

Just because we're sisters under the skin doesn't mean we've got much in common.

Id like to be in anything that tells a good story and has an interesting character.

We're all products of our environment. The key is not to fall.

The American system itself is incapable. It is as incapable of producing freedom for the Afro-American as the system of a chicken is of producing a duck egg.

I love to move around. I'm not a person who likes to stay in the same place all the time.

There's no such thing as history, only historians. That's how we know about the past.

Real life begins by committing yourself completely to Jesus Christ.