Like beautiful homes, cute babies, or noble careers helping others, books can make us feel like we mean something positive, and in gratitude, we truly love them.

I never take pictures. Skies are much larger in reminiscences and my friends are much better-looking. Photos crop reality into little squares; instead, I have very good binoculars.

I'd say it's never a challenge to present white and heteronormative privilege. The hard thing is to write any other way.

There are terrible things that never get easier, and there are things even more terrible that get easier with time and repetition.

My social status in the last year has gone from zero to hero.

I wanted to hear my own whispers in the next room and know that I was thinking of me.

In the rural South, the only interesting people were the sexual deviants. Everybody else was able to be part of the mainstream, and could find a way somehow.

The interesting artists I know are the ones doing political work. The most interesting people I know are the people who care about politics.

I'm enough of an anarchist aesthetically, when it comes to art - I want people to be reading my stuff voluntarily. They should be doing it because they want to.

People wanted to get me published, and my early work was so weird that they weren't getting anywhere. I thought, okay, I'll do something that's just a tad more normal.

I really like writing in English, and it's the best job I've ever had.

I'd rather be judged on what I can do instead of who I'm not.

I got my first tennis racket on my seventh birthday. And because we had a tennis court in our backyard, I played every day. By ten I was playing competitively.

I've always been passionate about fashion.

Because others have let us down, it is now our duty to face the hard truths and do the right thing--no matter the personal cost.

I don't think contemporary writers spend a lot of time reading each other. Particularly writers of the same nationality.

Realist artists should join together in a worldwide effort... Sharing it with each other and teaching it - that is the key to the success and never-ending beauty and harmony of Realism.

Bet you never eat, he says. Bet you drink up the oxygen like it's butter. Bet you can go for days on nothing but thoughts.

I wish to create trends rather than follow them.

Music tells you about the artist and what they were thinking about at the time, because the person has to think about it to sing it.

The Lord of the Rings trilogy restored the balance in the Force after the Star Wars prequels ruined everything that was awesome about being a nerd at the movies.