The cheese stands aloneThe cheese stands aloneHeigh-ho the merry-oThe cheese stands alone

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.

Zoolander was more of my own sensibility.

Staying vulnerable is a risk we have to take if we want to experience connection.

Every time you open your mouth you let men look into your mind.

You constantly hear about voter fraud... but you don't see huge amounts of vote fraud out there.

This is not just a war over stolen land, why do you think little boys are throwing stones at tanks?

Sam looked at me, yellow eyes catching and holding me. "I miss being me. I miss you. All the time.

Solutions to problems often depend upon how they're defined.

So many characters are governed by the consequences of their actions, and I wanted to have a character who is the exact opposite.

One must obey the man whom the city sets up in power in small things and in justice and in its opposite.

Progress in general seems to hold little interest for people who call themselves 'progressives.' What arouses them are denunciations of social failures and accusations of wrong-doing.