I take real people and put them in extraordinary situations.

I've had aunts and uncles who not only haven't read my books but could hardly believe that I was a writer.

I had my bully, and it was excruciating. Not only the bully, but the intimidation I felt.

It's amazing that the heart makes no noise when it cracks.

Everybody sins, Francis. The terrible thing is that we love our sins. We love the thing that makes us evil.

And he did see--that life was rotten, that there were no heroes, really, and that you couldn't trust anybody, not even yourself.

Why did the wise guys always accuse other people of being wise guys?

They don't actually want you to do your own thing, not unless it's their thing too.

I have lived a thousand lives lost within the pages of a book.

The possibility that hope comes out of hopelessness and that the opposite of things carry the seeds of birth - love out of hate, good out of evil. Didn't flowers grow out of dirt?

Affection is one of the most neglected words in the English language, that people throw the word love around like confetti when they mean affection.

The hand at her back stroked up and down. Never straying too far south, but igniting a fire inside her that she wanted this fireman to stoke instead of extinguish

You'd be surprised the type of people who are into metal when you see them. Sometimes I'm even surprised, but it's cool. That's the reason it's still around.

We pay just as dearly for our triumphs as we do for our defeats. Go ahead and fail. But fail with wit, fail with grace, fail with style. A mediocre failure is as insufferable as a mediocre success.

It cannot bring back and make whole those who suffered and died by a racist's criminal hand. But it can at least reaffirm our nation's commitment to seek the truth and make equal justice a reality.

It's not showing off if you back it up.

Innovations seem inevitable in retrospect, but at the time it's an uphill battle.

When a show has been on for so long, you lose fans, you gain fans. I remember this from 'Saturday Night Live.'

What you're seeking is seeking you.

Pointless. . . . Like giving caviar to an elephant.

Art for me is like breathing. When I stop breathing, what happens?