I had trouble listening to adults who didn't really mean anything that they said; it was as if their language poured into my ears only to drain right out a little spigot in the back of my head.

A map does not just chart, it unlocks and formulates meaning; it forms bridges between here and there, between disparate ideas that we did not know were previously connected.

One cannot spend one's entire life running into bathrooms when danger calls!

A novel is a tricky thing to map.

I would not know what to say to you, except this: there was never a map that got it all right, and truth and beauty were never married to one another for long.

A text is evolutionary by its very nature.

Writing a novel is always complicated, it's not like you snap your fingers and go, 'Ah, I know what I'll write'. For me, a lot of the time, I have to write and as I write, I learn about the story.

Part of being a writer is knowing when what you write is really bad.

Society was the only threat to the sanctity of selfhood: an unpatroned library was an orderly library.

Adults were pack rats of old, useless emotions.

Playing roles in any relationship is false and will inevitably lead to the relationship's collapse. Noone can be any one thing all the time.

Visions are for the Heavens to see.

In our eyes the roads are endless. Two are crossroads of the shadow.

You are fighting against nothingness all the time by creating a series of shields that you call personality, life history, feelings, ideas, and ways of seeing.

There is no such thing as a survivable or local nuclear war.

I diagnosed my loneliness as premature empty nest syndrome.

I thought I could never be the actor Dad was, so I avoided it for a while.

We've been at war for many years in Afghanistan following 9/11. We know that we've got young men and women on the ground now. We've got our blood and treasure at stake there already.

Life is to be lived, not controlled, and humanity is won by continuing to play in face of certain defeat.

It's never fun to be scared [about stage fright] but I think that it is important and it's healthy to always push yourself.