a swell of gratitude and appreciation for his assistant, as opposed to the murderous rage he felt toward the rest of his staff

I was a stepchild in two different families. The hardest thing about being a stepchild is you know that in some way everything would be easier if you didnt exist.

If I had a view like this to look down on every day, I would have the energy and inspiration to conquer the world. The trouble is, when you most need such a view, no one gives it to you.

Read at the level at which you want to write. Reading is the nourishment that feeds the kind of writing you want to do.

Goon Squad' took about three years to write and that's the short end. My second novel, 'Look at Me,' took six years.

I don’t want to fade away, I want to flame away - I want my death to be an attraction, a spectacle, a mystery. A work of art.

Because you can't write habitually and well all the time, you have to be willing to write badly. That's how you get the regularity that enables you to be present for the good stuff.

Reading is the nourishment that lets you do interesting work.

I'm always happy," Sasha said. "Sometimes I just forget.

The answers were maddeningly absent—it was like trying to remember a song that you knew made you feel a certain way, without a title, artist, or even a few bars to bring it back.

Vinegar: that's what fear smells like.

Count your blessings and be grateful not a great fool.

I laugh with them because it is one of the worst things to be in a room full of people and not laughting when everybody else is.

My sister is 4 years older than me and I've always looked up to her, she was the girl I always wanted to be.

Coach Lombardi showed me that by working hard and using my mind, I could overcome my weakness to the point where I could be one of the best.

I have a lot of aggression in me that needs to come out in a not-very-precise or articulate way.

Any playlist without Prince is no friend of mine.

The mind is not a book, to be opened at will and examined at leisure. Thoughts are not etched on the inside of skulls, to be perused by an invader. The mind is a complex and many-layered thing.

Of all the forms of wisdom, hindsight is by general consent the least merciful, the most unforgiving.

Now that's an Okay that really means Okay, not that Okay that women use that means everything but Okay.

Democracies are expense-averse and they think in terms of short-term, political interests rather than a long-term interest in stability.