There should be a word for a laugh that ends as soon as it starts. A laugh that's more a syllable of surprise and acknowledgment than it is anything else.

Sometimes writing is running downhill, your fingers jerking behind you on the keyboard the way your legs do when they can’t quite keep up with gravity.

To really be a nerd, she'd decided, you had to prefer fictional worlds to the real one.

I don’t trust anybody. Not anybody. And the more that I care about someone, the more sure I am they’re going to get tired of me and take off.

Smiling is confusing, she thought. This is why I don’t do it.

Months are different in college, especially freshman year. Too much happens. Every freshman month equals six regular months—they're like dog months.

I don't want to do anything. I don't even want to start this day because then I'll just be expected to finish it.

Emergency dance party--go away.

I don't like hello. It makes me sound like I have dementia, like I've never heard a phone ring before and I don't know what's supposed to happen next. Hello?

You flirt with everything." She could tell that her eyes were popping-- her eyeballs actually felt cold around the edges. "You flirt with old people and babies and everybody in between.

She was tired of being the one who cried.

When certain seeds are planted, they nearly always grow.

If this was mental illness, or even just a particularly clinical case of adolescence, I was bearing up pretty well.

It has always been my contention that an individual who can be relied upon to be himself and to be honest unto himself can be relied upon in every other way.

It is a fundamental fact that no cook, however creative and capable, can produce a dish of a quality any higher than that of its raw ingredients.

If you sound great in the practice room, you're practicing the wrong thing. Music washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life.

Being a husband and a dad is my inspiration.

It is the greatest feeling in the world. When we shine, we defy death for the moment. We enter into a state of immersion in the craft we ply, a state in which we become one with what we do.

Well, Detroit Institute is kind of a key - probably the largest permanent collection of puppets in the US.

Think beyond the pain. Think beyond the difficulty. Commit to having one good idea every day. What new idea will you claim today?

Survival in any meaningful sense is the key issue of our time