None of my clients are criminals, but to a much lighter degree that's what goes on. I hear the story, and I hear it with the level of detail that breeds empathy.

No one grows up thinking they want to be a ghostwriter. No one plans on that job.

I'm so used to being separate from the publication process. I turn in the book to the editor and then I'm done.

I think that the celebrity memoir as a genre is looked upon as a lesser form. One of my missions as a ghostwriter has been to elevate that form. Maybe that sounds pretentious!

I think one of the big things that's come out of ghostwriting for me is real compassion for the complexity of fame.

We exploit celebrities by caring about shallow things like whether they've gotten a facelift. And we violate their children constantly. But we also love them in a way.

Lizzie Pepper is pure fiction! The character is pulled from tabloids. But I think we all look at celebrity marriages and invest in them.

I think people dismiss celebrity memoirs as unreal, contrived and maybe partially made up. But that's definitely not true for anything that I write.

I'm handed a bunch of existing data. My job is to put that in the best narrative form. That is a puzzle I love to solve.

Working with somebody who has a more interesting life than I do - and getting to take on that life temporarily - is an endlessly interesting way to have the experience of writing memoir.

I've been writing books without ego for a very long time. I feel like it will get what it deserves. Or won't get what it doesn't deserve.

The cracks in your heart are there so the light can shine through.

Inspiration is not the thing which can be seek, its right within you.

Paris, true to its promise, had been a place of civilized indecencies, or uncivil decencies.

I defer to all these other American poets who, for some reason, I both envy and admire.

My parents elected me president of the family when I was 4. We actually had an election every year and I always won. I'm an only child, and I could count on my mother's vote.

If this be to have sense, if to be awake Be but to see this bright, great sleep of things, For the rarer potion mine own dreams I'll take And for truth commune with imaginings

The more I reflect and look back on the past, the more vividly do I feel my limitations.

I think celebrity culture and sexuality in pop music is really important, but I want there to be an alternative for people.

No. This is right. I feel it. I am the Catalyst, and I came to change all things. Prophets become warriors, dragons hunt as wolves. Fitz in Assassin's Quest

The blues and gospel stuff seemed to go together.