The entire ball game, in terms of both the exam and life, was what you gave attention to vs. what you willed yourself to not.

I do things like get in a taxi and say, "The library, and step on it.

It can become an exercise in trying to get the reader to like and admire you instead of an exercise in creative art.

One of the things that makes Wittgenstein a real artist to me is that he realized that no conclusion could be more horrible than solipsism.

If your fidelity to perfectionism is too high, you never do anything.

I know I'm paranoid, but am I paranoid enough?

This might be one way to start talking about differences between the early postmodern writers of the fifties and sixties and their contemporary descendants.

How odd I can have all this inside me and to you it’s just words.

Everybody is identical in their secret unspoken belief that way deep down they are different from everyone else.

In the day-to-day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship.

In reality, there is no such thing as not voting: you either vote by voting, or you vote by staying home and tacitly doubling the value of some Diehard's vote.

Doctors are allowed to practice medicine. What are you called when you are not practicing any more and finally know what your doing?

Advances in technology neither impede nor augment literature.

Tone can be as important as text.

Pain is a part of being alive, and we need to learn that. Pain does not last forever, nor is it necessarily unbeatable, and we need to be taught that.

As for feminism, I am a womanist more than I'm a feminist.

Semi-automatic weapons have no socially redeeming purpose.

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

Fear, she's the mother of violence.

I'm always going to have a story to tell.

After so many years of whispery, DIY vocals, there's this new generation of voices that are really starting to burst through the seams.