When I was writing 'The Abstinence Teacher, ' I really tried to immerse myself in contemporary American evangelical culture.

Maybe that's what we look for in the people we love, the spark of unhappiness we think we know how to extinguish.

When things don't go well, it helps to think of yourself as a genius and the rest of the world as a bunch of idiots.

Every minute we were together, I felt like I was wandering in the dark through a strange house, groping for a light switch. And then, whenever I found one and turned it on, the bulb was dead.

Sooner or later we all lose our loved ones. We all have to suffer, every last one of us.

I read 'The Great Gatsby' in high school and was hypnotized by the beauty of the sentences and moved by the story about the irrevocability of lost love.

Once you'd broken through that invisible barrier that separates one person from another, you were connected forever, whether you liked it or not.

It just took some people a little longer than others to realize how few words they needed to get by, how much of life they could negotiate in silence.

Apparently even the most awful tragedies, and the people they'd ruined, got a little stale after a while.

I don't really distinguish between sympathy and honesty when I'm writing. The two go together - I'm interested in inhabiting my characters, seeing the world through their eyes.

He made me think of all the books I hadn't read, and all the ones I'd read but hadn't fully understood.

When you care about someone, you can’t just turn that off because you learn they betrayed you.

I despise people who go to the gutter on either the right or the left and hurl rocks at those in the center.

The American people are not just being taxed to death; they're being taxed after death. But, no one should have to sell the life's work of a parent or a loved one just to pay the federal government.

The circulation of commodities is the original precondition of the circulation of money.

Do I have to change my name, will it get me far? Should I lose some weight, am I gonna be a star?

When you are in pain, a moment is an eternity.

I like to think the world wasn't ready for me, but maybe the truth is that I wasn't ready for the world. I've always arrived too late for my life.

If you are following the dharma no matter what you do it is moral.

This world is rotten. The rotten should die.

I see planets that don't exist and landscapes that have only been dreamed.